NASA (Exoplanet Catalog artwork)Kepler-1625b
Host of the first exomoon candidate — a Neptune-sized moon
Overview
Kepler-1625b is a super-Jupiter exoplanet orbiting the Sun-like star Kepler-1625 about 2,500 parsecs away in the constellation of Cygnus. The large gas giant is approximately the same radius as Jupiter, and orbits its star every 287.4 days. In 2017, hints of a Neptune-sized exomoon in orbit of the planet were found using photometric observations collected by the Kepler Mission. Further evidence for a Neptunian moon was found the following year using the Hubble Space Telescope, where two independent lines of evidence constrained the mass and radius to be Neptune-like. The mass-signature has been independently recovered by two other teams. However, the radius-signature was independently recovered by one of the teams but not the other. The original discovery team later showed that this latter study appears affected by systematic error sources that may have influenced its findings.
Source: Wikipedia
NASA: Kepler-1625 b is a Neptune-like exoplanet that orbits a G-type star. Its mass is 30.6 Earths, it takes 287.4 days to complete one orbit of its star, and is 0.87762 AU from its star. Its discovery was announced in 2016.
Why it matters
- Hubble data in 2018 hinted at a Neptune-sized moon orbiting this Jupiter-sized planet.
- A moon that large has no counterpart in our Solar System.
- Independent reanalyses have disputed the signal; the moon remains unconfirmed.
NASA puts it this way: “Kepler-1625 b is a Neptune-like exoplanet that orbits a G-type star. Its mass is 30.6 Earths, it takes 287.4 days to complete one orbit of its star, and is 0.8748 AU from its star. Its discovery was announced in 2016.”
Discovery & system
- Discovered
- 2016 · Transit · Kepler
- Discovery paper
- Morton et al. 2016
- Discoverers
- Kepler Space Telescope
- Host star
- Kepler-1625 · 5,677 K · 0.96 M☉
- System
- 1 known planet
The system
| World | Period | Distance | Radius | Mass | Temp. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kepler-1625 b | 287.4 d | 0.878 AU | 0.54 R♃ | 30.6 M⊕ | 350 K |
By the numbers
- Radius
- 0.54 R♃6.1 R⊕
- Mass
- 30.6 M⊕182.75 ×10²⁴ kg
- Orbital period
- 287.4 d0.79 yr
- Distance from star
- 0.878 AU131 million km
- Eccentricity
- 0nearly circular
- Equilibrium temp.
- 350 K77 °C
- Starlight received
- 3 × Earth
- Distance from Earth
- 7,535 ly2,310.1 pc
- Density
- 0.76 g/cm³0.14 × Earth
Sources
Image: NASA (Exoplanet Catalog artwork) · NASA media: generally free of copyright · image page
Text: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Taglines and highlights are editorial.