Exoplanets discovered

The remains of two planets closely orbiting a dying star some 3,900 light years away have given astronomers a glimpse of what may happen at the demise of our own solar system about ve billion years from now. Named KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02, the planets orbit a sun that has passed the red giant stage a star that has burned up most of its fuel and becomes larger and larger, according to the study, published recently in the journal Nature.

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Two survivors of their system

The two exoplanets, named KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02, are likely the remnants of gas giant planets that were roasted by the bloating stars ery envelope. They are now reduced to their single dense core, consisting mostly of iron and other heavy elements. The pair are respectively 76% and 87% the size of the Earth, but were probably many times larger.

KOI 55.01

KOI 55.02

EARTH

When our sun swells up to become a red giant it will engulf the Earth. If a tiny planet like the Earth spends a billion years in an environment like that, it will just evaporate. Only planets with masses very much larger than the Earth, like Jupiter or Saturn, could possibly survive.
Elizabeth Green of the University of Arizonas Steward Observatory.

DIAMETER

9,662 km

11,060 km 1,137,000 km 823 hrs

12,713 km 150,000,000 km 36,525 days 15 C

DISTANCE FROM THE SUN 897,000 km ORBIT 576 hrs

3,900 light years from home

Based on data from the U.S. satellite Kepler team of researchers by analyzing the pulsations of the star KIC 05807616 (located in the vicinity of the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra)

SURFACE 8,000 - 9,000 C 8,000 - 9,000 C TEMPERATURE

Milky Way

The host star

Cygnus

Lyra

KOI 55.02 KIC 05807616

2
KOI 55.01

Reaching the end of its life, it swelled into a red giant, releasing a large amount of gravitational energy.

Having migrated so close, the exoplanets probably plunged deep into the stars envelope during the red giant phase, but survived. The two observed bodies would then be the dense cores of ancient giant planets whose gaseous envelopes were vaporized during the immersion phase.

One light year equals 9,460 billion km

The host star of the two exoplanets is a subdwarf B star, composed of the exposed core of a red giant that has lost most of its ery envelope, and burns at about 28,000 Kelvin, or 27,760 C.

NASA launched the Kepler Space Telescope in 2009 to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover dozens of Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets.
QMI AGENCY