New exoplanet system is 'mirror image' of Earth and sun
Posted by Paul Scott Anderson in SPACE | June 14, 2020
Researchers from Germany and the US have discovered an exoplanet less than twice the size of Earth orbiting at about the same distance from its star, making it the closest analog to the Earth-sun system known so far.
Diagram depicting how KOI-456.04 orbits in the habitable zone of its star, Kepler-160, at about the same distance Earth is from the sun. The planet, less than twice the size of Earth, therefore receives about the same amount of solar energy as Earth does. This is the closest Earth-sun analog discovered so far among exoplanets. Image via MPS/ René Heller.
The number of potentially habitable exoplanets keeps growing, as more and more worlds orbiting distant stars are discovered. So far, most of those planets have been found orbiting red dwarf stars, since they are dimmer, and planets are easier to detect around them (and also are the most common stars in our galaxy). But now, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen, Germany, and others from the U.S., have announced that they have found a new exoworld, less than twice the size of Earth, which orbits a sunlike star, Kepler-160, just over 3,000 light-years from our solar system.
What makes this discovery of particular interest is that the planet appears to be orbiting its star at a similar distance as Earth’s from the sun, and receives almost the same amount of energy from its star as Earth does. This would make it the most similar to the Earth-sun system of any exoplanetary system discovered so far, almost a mirror image.
The peer-reviewed findings were published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 638, id. A10 and submitted to arXiv on June 3, 2020. The research also includes scientists from the Sonneberg Observatory, the University of Göttingen, the University of California in Santa Cruz and NASA.
Fuller diagram showing how the KOI-456.04 system compares to that of
Earth-sun, other stars from the Kepler mission and red dwarf stars.
Image via MPS/ René Heller.
While the new planet – provisionally named KOI-456.04 – hasn’t been fully confirmed yet, the paper states that the probability of it being a real planet and not a false alarm is 85%. By far, most planetary candidates found do end up being confirmed later with more observations. From the paper:
More:
https://earthsky.org/space/exoplanet-kepler-160-mirror-image-earth-sun
