Question: KIC-7340288 b is the name given to which celestial body?
(a) Star
(b) Jupiter like gaseous planet
(c) Rocky earth like planet
(d) Comet
Answer: (c)
Related facts:
- University of British Columbia astronomy student Michelle Kunimoto has discovered 17 new planets including an earth like solid planet. The new finding, published in The Astronomical Journal
- She achieved this feat by combing through data gathered by NASA’s Kepler mission.
- Officially this planet has been named as KIC-7340288 b, 1.5 times bigger than Earth, this planet is potentially habitable.
- This planet is 1000 light-years away from the Earth. It has a year that is 142.5 days long.
- Over its original four-year mission, the Kepler satellite looked for planets, especially those that lie in the Habitable Zones of their stars.
- Scientists believe if a planet lies in the habitable zone of a star then there is a greater possibility that liquid water could exist on a rocky planet’s surface.
- Michelle Kunimoto is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of physics and astronomy.
- There have only been 15 small, confirmed planets in the Habitable Zone found in Kepler data so far.
- This planet is orbiting its star at 0.444 Astronomical Units (AU, the distance between Earth and our Sun) – just bigger than Mercury’s orbit in our Solar System. It gets about a third of the light Earth gets from the Sun.
- Of the other 16 new planets discovered, the smallest is only two-thirds the size of Earth and other planets are up to eight times the size of Earth.
- Kunimoto used the transit method to look for the planets among the roughly 200,000 stars observed by the Kepler mission.
Transit method:
- Every time a planet passes in front of a star, the event known as transit.
- At the time of transit a planet blocks a portion of that star’s light and causes a temporary decrease in the star’s brightness.
- On finding these dips, known as transits, one can start to piece together information about the planet, such as its size and how long it takes to orbit.
Links:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ubc-astronomy-student-finds-17-new-possible-planets-1-may-have-water-1.5481900
https://www.ndtv.com/science/17-new-planets-including-habitable-earth-sized-world-discovered-by-university-of-british-columbia-ub-2187518