Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

A sub-Mercury-sized exoplanet

2013; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 494; Issue: 7438 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/nature11914

1476-4687

Thomas Barclay, Jason F. Rowe, Jack J. Lissauer, Daniel Huber, François Fressin, Steve B. Howell, Stephen T. Bryson, W. J. Chaplin, Jean-Michel Désert, Eric Lopez, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Fergal Mullally, Darin Ragozzine, Guillermo Torres, Elisabeth R. Adams, Eric Agol, D. Barrado, Sarbani Basu, T. R. Bedding, Lars A. Buchhave, David Charbonneau, Jessie L. Christiansen, J. Christensen‐Dalsgaard, David R. Ciardi, William D. Cochran, A. K. Dupree, Y. Elsworth, Mark E. Everett, Debra A. Fischer, Eric B. Ford, Jonathan J. Fortney, John C. Geary, Michael R. Haas, R. Handberg, S. Hekker, Christopher E. Henze, Elliott P. Horch, Andrew W. Howard, Roger C. Hunter, Howard Isaacson, Jon M. Jenkins, C. Karoff, S. D. Kawaler, H. Kjeldsen, Todd C. Klaus, David W. Latham, Jie Li, J. Lillo-Box, Mikkel N. Lund, M. Lundkvist, Τ. S. Metcalfe, A. Miglio, Robert Morris, Elisa V. Quintana, Dennis Stello, Jeffrey C. Smith, Martin Still, Susan E. Thompson,

Astro and Planetary Science

Stellar data from the Kepler spacecraft are used to infer the existence of a sub-Mercury-sized exoplanet, the smallest yet discovered, in orbit around a Sun-like star. When the Kepler spacecraft was launched in 2009 its brief was to search for rocky planets around Sun-like host stars in our Galaxy. Many of the hundreds of known exoplanets are large 'hot Jupiters' close-in to their stars. Last year it became possible to detect Earth-sized exoplanets, and now comes the discovery of a rocky planet significantly smaller than Mercury. Kepler-37b is orbiting the Sun-like star Kepler-37 in a system with at least two other planets. It is similar to our Moon in size and is likely to resemble Mercury: rocky, no atmosphere and no water. Since the discovery of the first exoplanets1,2, it has been known that other planetary systems can look quite unlike our own3. Until fairly recently, we have been able to probe only the upper range of the planet size distribution4,5, and, since last year, to detect planets that are the size of Earth6 or somewhat smaller7. Hitherto, no planets have been found that are smaller than those we see in the Solar System. Here we report a planet significantly smaller than Mercury8. This tiny planet is the innermost of three that orbit the Sun-like host star, which we have designated Kepler-37. Owing to its extremely small size, similar to that of the Moon, and highly irradiated surface, the planet, Kepler-37b, is probably rocky with no atmosphere or water, similar to Mercury.