SPACE — To date, the smallest exoplanet ever discovered is a rocky planet called Kepler-37b. This planet orbits the star Kepler-37, a star that belongs to the same class of stars as our sun, in the constellation Lyra. This star is located 209 light years from Earth.
Kepler-37b has a radius only 35% of the size of Earth. Meanwhile, the Moon has a radius of 27% of the size of Earth, and Mercury has a radius of 38% of the size of Earth. This makes Kepler-37b slightly larger than the Moon and slightly smaller than Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System.
Kepler-37b was discovered in 2013 by the Kepler space telescope. Kepler is a planet-hunting telescope. During its mission, this telescope discovered most of the known exoplanets.
Planets the size of Kepler-37b, called sub-Earths, are actually among the rarest planets discovered. As mentioned above, Kepler-37’s parent star is similar to our sun.
Both the Sun and Kepler-37 are classified as G-type stars, so their sizes, masses and temperatures are quite similar. Kepler-37 is about 80% the mass and size of our Sun and is slightly cooler.
Furthermore, Kepler 37 is estimated to be about a billion years older than our sun. This suggests that the surrounding planets are also about a billion years older than the planets in our solar system.
Finding a planet as small as Kepler-37b around a Sun-like star is rare. Kepler-37b orbits its star at a distance of about 15 million kilometers. The planet only takes about 13 days to orbit its star.
Meanwhile, Mercury, the closest planet to the sun in our solar system, is located about 58 million kilometers from the sun. Mercury takes 88 days to orbit the sun.
The surface of Kepler-37b
Current technology is not advanced enough to capture detailed images of exoplanet surfaces. However, there are several things that can be drawn based on what we know about an exoplanet.
In the case of Kepler-37b, its size suggests that the planet is composed mostly of rock and metal. The composition of Kepler 37-b is similar to that of the rocky planets in our solar system.
Because it orbits so close to its parent star, it likely has a very high surface temperature. Astronomers estimate Kepler-37b’s surface temperature to be around 427 degrees Celsius.
That temperature is too hot to support the existence of liquid water, so Kepler-37b is unlikely to be a habitable world. Given its size and surface temperature, astronomers believe the planet likely has no atmosphere.
2024-01-13 03:30:00
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