Kepler-16b

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Exoplanet
Kepler-16b

Artist's impression of the Kepler-16 system with Kepler-16b (black; in the foreground)

Artist's impression of the Kepler-16 system with Kepler-16b (black; in the foreground)
Constellation swan
Position
equinox : J2000.0
Right ascension 19h 16m 18.17s
declination + 51 ° 45 ′ 26.78 ″
Orbit data
Central star Kepler-16 (AB)
Major semi-axis 0.7048 ± 0.0013 AU
eccentricity 0.0069  + 0.0010−0.0015
Period of circulation 229 days
Further data
diameter 0.7538 R J
Dimensions 0.333 ± 0.015 M J
Inclination (90.0322 ± 0.0023) °
Length of the ascending node (0.003 ± 0.0013) °
Argument of the periapsis (318 + 10 - 22 ) °
history
discovery Kepler Mission
Date of discovery September 15, 2011

Kepler-16b (formerly Kepler-16 (AB) -b) is a circumbinary planet . It is a Saturn- mass planet, half of which consists of gas and half of stone. It orbits the binary star Kepler-16 with a period of 229 days. "Kepler-16b is the first undoubtedly confirmed example (...) of a planet orbiting not one but two stars," said Josh Carter of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and member of the discovery team.

Discovery and observation

The planet has been using the space telescope Kepler of the NASA discovered. Scientists had succeeded in discovering the planet using the transit method after observing that one of the stars in the system darkened without the other passing through it. In addition, the precise recording of all eclipses and passages of the planet and the stars of the system allowed an unusually accurate calculation of the sizes and masses of the objects in the Kepler 16 system. Laurance Doyle, the leader of the research team that discovered the planet, said of this accuracy, "I believe this is the best-measured planet outside the solar system." For example, the planet's radius can be determined to within 0.3%, more accurate than any other exoplanet [as of September 2011].

Kepler-16b is also interesting because the radius of its orbit is smaller than the assumed limit for planet formation in binary systems. According to Sara Seager , a planetary expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , it was previously assumed that a planet in a binary star system could maintain a steady orbit if it was at least seven times as far from the stars as the stars are from each other.

Seen from Earth, the planet has not passed the first star since 2014. It will cross the second, brighter star until 2018, after which the planet will no longer be detectable using the transit method until around 2042.

The planet orbits at the very edge of the habitable zone , but is probably a gas giant with a surface temperature between −100 ° C and −70 ° C.

Surname

Artist's impression of the Kepler-16 system with Kepler-16A in yellow, Kepler-16B in orange / red and Kepler-16 (AB) -b in purple.

In the notice of announcement, the team wrote: "Following the principle of Ref. 22, we can refer to the third body as Kepler 16 (AB) -b, or simply 'b' unless there is ambiguity." In the SIMBAD database it is called Kepler-16 (AB) -b listed, in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia it is listed as Kepler-16 (AB) b.

The Smithsonian Center has referred to the Kepler-16b informally as “ Tatooine ”, a reference to the fictional planet from the Star Wars series that orbits two suns. "Over and over again we see that there is something weird and weird in science than fiction," said John Knoll, who worked on special effects on some of the films.

Potential habitability

The habitable zone of the Kepler-16 system is approximately 55 to 106 million kilometers from the binary star Kepler-16 (AB). With an orbit radius of around 104 million kilometers, Kepler-16b is just on the outer edge of this habitable zone. Although the chances of finding life on the gas giant itself are slim, simulations conducted by researchers at the University of Texas have shown that at some point in the system's history, an earth-sized planet may be affected by disturbance of other bodies from the center of the habitable zone could have been driven so that Kepler-16b could capture it as the moon. The researchers also considered the possibility that a more distant, habitable planet about 140 million kilometers away could orbit the binary star, which is the temperature needed to keep water fluid through a dense mixture of greenhouse gases , such as carbon dioxide and Methane .

Web links

Commons : Kepler-16b  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nadia Drake: On Kepler-16b, shadows come in pairs . In: Science News . Society for Science & the Public. Archived from the original on August 28, 2012. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 16, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sciencenews.org
  2. ↑ From Star Wars to science fact: Tatooine-like planet discovered . In: Smithsonian Science . The Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on September 24, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 24, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / smithsonianscience.org
  3. ↑ a b Scott Gold: Scientists find planet orbiting two suns like in 'Star Wars' . In: Los Angeles Times , September 15, 2011. Retrieved September 16, 2011. 
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Dennis Overbye: NASA Detects Planet Dancing With a Pair of Stars . In: The New York Times , September 15, 2011. Retrieved September 16, 2011. 
  5. ↑ Joshua N. Winn, Simon Albrecht, John Asher Johnson, Guillermo Torres, William D. Cochran, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Andrew W. Howard, Howard Isaacson: spin-orbit alignment for the circumbinary planet host Kepler-16A . In:  . 2011. arxiv : 1109.3198v2 .
  6. ^ Abel Mendez: Exoplanets Continuously Within the Habitable Zone - Planetary Habitability Laboratory @ UPR Arecibo. In: sites.google.com. October 21, 2011, accessed January 26, 2015 .
  7. ↑ FV Hessman, VS Dhillon, DE Winget, MR Schreiber, K. Horne, TR Marsh, E. Guenther, A. Schwope: On the naming convention used for multiple star system and extrasolar planets . In:  . 2010. arxiv : 1012.0707 . bibcode : 2010arXiv1012.0707H .
  8. ↑ Laurance R. Doyle, Joshua A. Carter, Daniel C. Fabrycky, Robert W. Slawson, Steve B. Howell: Kepler-16: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet . In: Science . tape 333 , no. 6049 , September 16, 2011, ISSN  0036-8075 , p. 1602–1606 , doi : 10.1126 / science.1210923 , PMID 21921192 ( sciencemag.org [accessed August 4, 2016]).
  9. ↑ Object query: Kepler-16b on the online SIMBAD Astronomical database [1]
  10. ^ Jean Schneider: Notes for Planet Kepler-16 (AB) b . Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia . 2011. Archived from the original on October 11, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 23, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / exoplanet.eu
  11. ↑ Victoria Jaggard: "Tatooine" Planet With Two Suns Could Host Habitable Moon? . In: National Geographic , Jan. 9, 2012.