{"id":30419,"date":"2014-12-18T16:13:33","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T02:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=30419"},"modified":"2021-10-15T16:14:06","modified_gmt":"2021-10-16T02:14:06","slug":"kepler-super-earth-discovery-confirmed-by-uh-astronomer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2014\/12\/18\/kepler-super-earth-discovery-confirmed-by-uh-astronomer\/","title":{"rendered":"Kepler super-Earth discovery confirmed by UH<\/abbr> astronomer"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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This artist\u2019s conception portrays the first planet discovered by the Kepler spacecraft during its K2 mission. (Artwork courtesy: CfA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite a malfunction that ended its primary mission in May 2013, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered a new super-Earth using data collected during its “second life,” known as the K2 mission.<\/p>\n

University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span><\/a> astronomer Christoph Baranec<\/strong> supplied confirming data with his Robo-AO<\/abbr> instrument<\/a> mounted on the Palomar 1.5-meter telescope, and former Â鶹´«Ã½graduate student Brendan Bowler<\/strong>, now a Joint Center for Planetary Astronomy postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, provided additional confirming observations using the Keck II<\/abbr> adaptive optics system on Maunakea.<\/p>\n

During a nine-day test in February 2014 Kepler detected a single planetary transit. The newfound planet, HIP<\/abbr> 116454b, has a diameter of 20,000 miles, two and a half times the size of Earth, and weighs almost 12 times as much as Earth. This makes HIP<\/abbr> 116454b a super-Earth, a class of planets that doesn’t exist in our solar system.<\/p>\n

During the process of verifying the discovery, Harvard astronomer and study co-author John Johnson<\/strong>, a former postdoctoral fellow at the Â鶹´«Ã½Institute for Astronomy<\/a>, contacted Baranec and the Robo-AO<\/abbr> team to obtain high-resolution imaging of HIP<\/abbr> 116454 to determine whether it has very nearby stellar companions that could be contaminating the Kepler data, causing a misestimation of the planet’s size and other characteristics.<\/p>\n

“Because of the flexible nature of the Robo-AO<\/abbr> system, it was possible to add the target to the Robo-AO<\/abbr> intelligent queue and several observations were carried out within days of the request,” said Baranec.<\/p>\n

While Robo-AO<\/abbr> didn’t find any stellar companions, some additional follow-up measurements hinted that there might be a companion that is too close for Robo-AO<\/abbr> to see. To be absolutely sure there were no contaminating companions, Bowler was asked to observe HIP<\/abbr> 116454 with the Keck II<\/abbr> adaptive optics system. He confirmed that HIP<\/abbr> 116454 has no close-in stellar companions.<\/p>\n

The research paper reporting this discovery has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read the Institute for Astronomy’s news release<\/a> for more on the discovery.<\/p>\n

—By Louise Good<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> astronomer Christoph Baranec and Brendan Bowler supplied confirming data of Kepler’s super-Earth discovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[34,35,9],"class_list":["post-30419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-astronomy","tag-institute-for-astronomy","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t