A Super-Earth-sized Planet Orbiting in or Near the Habitable Zone around a Sun-like Star
- Creators
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Barclay, Thomas
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Ciardi, David
Abstract
We present the discovery of a super-Earth-sized planet in or near the habitable zone of a Sun-like star. The host is Kepler-69, a 13.7 mag G4V-type star. We detect two periodic sets of transit signals in the 3-year flux time series of Kepler-69, obtained with the Kepler spacecraft. Using the very high precision Kepler photometry, and follow-up observations, our confidence that these signals represent planetary transits is >99.3%. The inner planet, Kepler-69b, has a radius of 2.24^(+0.44)_(-0.29) R_⊕ and orbits the host star every 13.7 days. The outer planet, Kepler-69c, is a super-Earth-sized object with a radius of 1.7^(+0.34)_(-0.23) R_⊕ and an orbital period of 242.5 days. Assuming an Earth-like Bond albedo, Kepler-69c has an equilibrium temperature of 299 ± 19 K, which places the planet close to the habitable zone around the host star. This is the smallest planet found by Kepler to be orbiting in or near the habitable zone of a Sun-like star and represents an important step on the path to finding the first true Earth analog.
Additional Information
© 2013 American Astronomical Society. Received 2013 January 21; accepted 2013 March 19; published 2013 April 18. This paper includes data collected by the Kepler mission. Funding for the Kepler mission is provided by the NASA Science Mission Directorate. Some Kepler data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Support for MAST for non-HST data is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science via grant NNX09AF08G and by other grants and contracts. This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. We used data from the UKIRT Wide Field Camera (WFCAM; Casali et al. 2007) and a photometric system described in Hewett et al. (2006). The pipeline processing and science archive are described in Hambly et al. (2008). D.H. is supported by appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at Ames Research Center, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities through a contract with NASA.Attached Files
Published - 0004-637X_768_2_101.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 38787
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20130604-135807422
- NASA
- NAS5-26555
- NASA
- NNX09AF08G
- NASA Postdoctoral Program
- Created
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2013-06-04Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)