Kepler-62: A Five-Planet System with Planets of 1.4 and 1.6 Earth Radii in the Habitable Zone

Creators: Borucki, William J.; Crepp, Justin R.; Ciardi, David; Howard, Andrew W.

Abstract

We present the detection of five planets—Kepler-62b, c, d, e, and f—of size 1.31, 0.54, 1.95, 1.61 and 1.41 Earth radii (R_⊕), orbiting a K2V star at periods of 5.7, 12.4, 18.2, 122.4, and 267.3 days, respectively. The outermost planets, Kepler-62e and -62f, are super–Earth-size (1.25 R_⊕ < planet radius ≤ 2.0 R_⊕) planets in the habitable zone of their host star, respectively receiving 1.2 ± 0.2 times and 0.41 ± 0.05 times the solar flux at Earth's orbit. Theoretical models of Kepler-62e and -62f for a stellar age of ~7 billion years suggest that both planets could be solid, either with a rocky composition or composed of mostly solid water in their bulk.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2 January 2013; accepted 5 April 2013; Published online 18 April 2013. Kepler was competitively selected as the 10th Discovery mission. Funding for this mission is provided by NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA. The Keck Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. L.K. acknowledges support from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grants ENP Ka 3142/1-1 and NASA Astrobiology Institute. Funding for the Stellar Astrophysics Centre is provided by the Danish National Research Foundation. The research is supported by the ASTERISK project (Asteroseismic Investigations with SONG and Kepler) funded by European Research Council grant 267864. W.F.W. and J.A.O. acknowledge support from NASA through the Kepler Participating Scientist Program (PSP) and from NSF grant AST-1109928. D.F. acknowledges support from NASA ADAP12-0172. O.R.S.-O. and J.N.W. are supported by the Kepler PSP through grant NNX12AC76G. E.F. is partially supported by NASA PSP grants NNX08AR04G and NNX12AF73G. E.A. acknowledges NSF career grant AST-0645416. We also thank the Spitzer staff at IPAC and in particular N. Silbermann for checking and scheduling the Spitzer observations. The Spitzer Space Telescope is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. We thank the many people who gave so generously of their time to make this mission a success. All data products are available to the public at the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, http://stdatu.stsci.edu/kepler.

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Accepted Version - 1304.7387.pdf

Supplemental Material - Borucki.SM.corrected.pdf

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