A sub-Mercury-sized exoplanet
Abstract
Since the discovery of the first exoplanet we have known that other planetary systems can look quite unlike our own. However, until recently we have only been able to probe the upper range of the planet size distribution. The high precision of the Kepler space telescope has allowed us to detect planets that are the size of Earth and somewhat smaller, but no previous planets have been found that are smaller than those we see in our own Solar System. Here we report the discovery of a planet significantly smaller than Mercury. This tiny planet is the innermost of three planets that orbit the Sun-like host star, which we have designated Kepler-37. Owing to its extremely small size, similar to that of Earth's Moon, and highly irradiated surface, Kepler-37b is probably a rocky planet with no atmosphere or water, similar to Mercury.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1305.5587,
title = {A sub-Mercury-sized exoplanet},
author = {Thomas Barclay and Jason F. Rowe and Jack J. Lissauer and Daniel Huber and Francois Fressin and Steve B. Howell and Stephen T. Bryson and William J. Chaplin and Jean-Michel Désert and Eric D. Lopez and Geoffrey W. Marcy and Fergal Mullally and Darin Ragozzine and Guillermo Torres and Elisabeth R. Adams and Eric Agol and David Barrado and Sarbani Basu and Timothy R. Bedding and Lars A. Buchhave and David Charbonneau and Jessie L. Christiansen and Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard and David Ciardi and William D. Cochran and Andrea K. Dupree and Yvonne Elsworth and Mark Everett and Debra A. Fischer and Eric B. Ford and Jonathan J. Fortney and John C. Geary and Michael R. Haas and Rasmus Handberg and Saskia Hekker and Christopher E. Henze and Elliott Horch and Andrew W. Howard and Roger C. Hunter and Howard Isaacson and Jon M. Jenkins and Christoffer Karoff and Steven D. Kawaler and Hans Kjeldsen and Todd C. Klaus and David W. Latham and Jie Li and Jorge Lillo-Box and Mikkel N. Lund and Mia Lundkvist and Travis S. Metcalfe and Andrea Miglio and Robert L. Morris and Elisa V. Quintana and Dennis Stello and Jeffrey C. Smith and Martin Still and Susan E. Thompson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1305.5587},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
Accepted and published in Nature (2013 Feb 28). This is the submitted version of paper, merged with the Supplementary Information