An international team of astronomers led by the Belgian Vincent Van Eylen (PhD student at danish university Aarhus) discovered, by using NASA’s Kepler telescope, a new extrasolar planet, called Kepler-410A b, lies in the constellation Lyra about 431 light-years away from Earth.
So far, there have been discovered more than 1,000 exoplanets orbiting stars other than the Sun. The new exoplanet discovered is bigger than Earth (2.8 times the radius of Earth) and with a size comparable to Neptune. The period of revolution of the planet around its star (extremely bright) is 17.8 days. That star, Kepler-410 , is more massive than the Sun.
Life on this exoplanet is highly unlikely, given that it is closer to it parent-star than the distance that separates Earth from the Sun, which implies a much higher temperature on it surface. Kepler-410 b is located about 425 light years from our little blue planet. This discovery was welcomed by Belgian Prime Minister on his Twitter account.
We are confident that there is another planet, but because it doesn’t move in front of the star, we don’t yet know what it is like
Dr Van Eylen said.
According to a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, Kepler-410A is the third brightest confirmed planet host star in the Kepler field and one of the brightest hosts of all currently known transiting exoplanets.
Ultimately, to understand anything about exoplanets, we need to understand the stars they revolve around. In this case, asteroseismology has even allowed us to measure the inclination angle of the star,
said Eylen.
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