An artist’s concept showing two of the seven discovered planets orbiting a Sun-like star. The system, called Kepler-385, was identified using data from NASA’s Kepler mission. Credit: NASA/Daniel Rutter
A system of seven steam planets has been revealed by an ongoing study of data from NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope: Each is bathed in more radiant heat from its host star per area than any planet in our solar system. Unlike any of our immediate neighbors, all seven planets in this system, named Kepler-385, are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.
It is one of the few planetary systems known to contain more than six confirmed planets or planet candidates. The Kepler-385 system is among the highlights of the new Kepler catalog, which includes nearly 4,400 planet candidates, including more than 700 multi-planet systems.
“We have assembled the most accurate list of Kepler planet candidates and their properties to date,” said Jack Lissauer, a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and lead author of the paper introducing the new catalog. “NASA’s Kepler mission discovered most of the known exoplanets, and this new catalog will allow astronomers to learn more about their properties.”
The research paper “Kepler’s updated catalog of planet candidates: Focus on accuracy and orbital periods” is available at Journal of Planetary Science and is currently located at arXiv prepress server.
At the center of the Kepler-385 system, a Sun-like star is about 10% larger and 5% hotter than the Sun. The two inner planets, both slightly larger than Earth, are likely rocky and may have thin atmospheres. The other five planets are larger—each with a radius about twice that of Earth—and are expected to be enveloped in thick atmospheres.
The ability to describe the properties of the Kepler-385 system in such detail testifies to the quality of this latest catalog of exoplanets. While the last catalogs of the Kepler mission focused on creating lists optimized for measuring how common planets are around other stars, this study aims to create a comprehensive list that provides precise information about each of the systems, making discoveries like Kepler-385 possible.
The new catalog uses improved measurements of stellar properties and more accurately calculates the path of each transiting planet through its host star. This combination illustrates that when a star hosts multiple transiting planets, they typically have more circular orbits than when a star hosts only one or two.
Kepler’s primary observations ended in 2013, followed by an extended telescope mission called K2, which continued until 2018. The data Kepler collected continues to reveal new discoveries about our galaxy. After the mission already showed us that there are more planets than stars, this new study paints a more detailed picture of what each of these planets and their home systems look like, giving us a better look at the many worlds outside our solar system.
More information:
Jack J. Lissauer et al., The Updated Kepler Planet Candidate Catalog: A Focus on Accuracy and Orbital Periods, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2311.00238
Information from the diary:
arXiv
Citation: Scorching seven-planet system revealed by Kepler’s new exoplanet list (2023, Nov. 3) Retrieved Nov. 6, 2023, from https://phys.org/news/2023-11-seven-planet-revealed-kepler-exoplanet.html
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