Mars-Sized Planet Orbiting Star Has A Year Less Than 10 Hours

NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered the approximately 10-hour transit of a Mars-sized exoplanet orbiting the M-dwarf star KOI-4777.

Photo Insert: NASA’s Kepler mission discovered the approximately 10-hour transit of a Mars-sized exoplanet orbiting the M-dwarf star KOI-4777.

The proximity of the planet to its host star and the smaller size of the M-dwarf compared to a Sun-like star made it possible to detect KOI-4777.01, one of the smallest ultra-short period planets discovered, Live Science reported.

Researchers used the Penn State Habitable-zone Planet Finder, a high-precision astronomical spectrograph, to validate the planetary nature of KOI-4777.01. The planetary nature of a Mars-sized object orbiting extremely closely to an M-dwarf star has been validated using the Penn State Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF).

The planet, which was originally classified as a false positive in an automated search of data collected by the Kepler space telescope, is about half the size of Earth and is so close to its host star that it orbits in less than 10 hours.

If it were orbiting a star the size of our sun it would be skimming the star’s corona—the aura of exceedingly hot plasma that extends out beyond the star’s surface! It is the smallest planet with an ultra-short period orbit known and could help astronomers understand how these rare planets form.

A paper describing the discovery, by a team of researchers led by Penn State scientists, appears online and has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.

“Ultra-short period planets—planets with orbital periods less than one day—are extremely rare,” said Caleb Cañas, a graduate student in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and lead author of the paper.

“Only a handful have been detected orbiting M-dwarf stars, which are small, cool stars a fraction of the size and brightness of our sun. We don’t yet know precisely how these planets form, so discoveries like these are important for helping us to constrain potential formation scenarios.”

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