Kepler-10: Kepler's first confirmed solid super-Earth in a 2-planet system

Sirius_Alpha wrote:

Personally, I expect just two or three, maybe five at the most.

Last year you had guessed the number of planets. (I predicted 50 )

Try it now be called the number of planets published at a conference in Seattle? What is the smallest mass of the planet will have been confirmed?

Not sure if I want to go double-or-nothing with my Nostradamus points... but... I'll go ahead and guess 10 - 15 planets. Lowest mass in the super-Earth/Neptune overlap (5 - 7 M_e).

More stuff about Kepler-9d perhaps? If they have a mass measurement then I guess that would be reasonably likely to qualify as the smallest mass of confirmed Kepler planets...

Okay, I'll try 50-80 planets and 1-2 Earth masses.

In general, I think the best strategy is the confirmation of candidates for the brightest stars of each spectral class.
For example take the 20 brightest stars of each spectral class (M, K, G, F and A) and to confirm them. So we can immediately obtain the frequency of different types of planets around different types of stars.

Well if this one is totally new, and given we already have the examples of GJ 1214b and CoRoT-7b in the super-Earth mass domain as examples of icy and rocky planets, and a carbon planet would not be particularly obvious from just the combination of mass and radius then it might be that they've managed to find an iron planet.

Wouldn't put money on it though.

What about a Chthonian planet?

There'll be a live chat session on Jan 10 for people to pose questions regarding the announcement to be made.
http://www.nasa.gov/connect/chat/kepler_chat.html

Sirius_Alpha wrote:

What about a Chthonian planet?

The section from which I quoted has the heading
"Exoplanets: Misaligned, Migratory, Metallic, and Mini".
Perhaps "Metallic and Mini" refers to a Chtonian planet.

Around star Kepler 10 discovered the smallest exoplanet so far with density 8.8 g/cm3 and second is not confirmed yet http://newsblaze.com/story/2011011010010200003.pnw/topstory.html

Slightly weird that the press release doesn't even mention CoRoT-7b, particularly when they state that Kepler-10b is the "first solid evidence of a rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun"...

Merged with the Kepler results thread.

Lazarus wrote:

Slightly weird that the press release doesn't even mention CoRoT-7b, particularly when they state that Kepler-10b is the "first solid evidence of a rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun"...

Not to mention more hating on pulsar planets.

Ah, but what are the pulsar planets actually made of? Are they definitely rocky?

Being only a couple times the mass of Luna, I can't imagine a realistic composition for the innermost planet under the assumption it is a planet (and assuming coplanarity).

Look at gliese 1214 b it is mini neptune.Pulsar planets can be still with the same composition but personally I doubt in it.I wonder what composition has planet c around kepler 10 star if it has 20 mass earth and radius only 0.2 j

tommi59 wrote:

Look at gliese 1214 b it is mini neptune.

It's also a few order of magnitudes more massive than the ~Lunar-mass planet in the PSR B1257+12 system. It can hold onto a thick envelope.

tommi59 wrote:

I wonder what composition has planet c around kepler 10 star if it has 20 mass earth and radius only 0.2 j

Do you have a reference for this unconfirmed second planet? I may not be reading closely enough, but I haven't see a reference to it anywhere.

Pulsar planets as carbon planets maybe?

Kepler-10c page on EPE

Kepler-10b discovery page including details of KOI-72.02=Kepler-10c.

KOI-72.02 if it exists has a smaller radius than Neptune.

Smallest transit - 150 ppm.

It looks like mistake on EPE page there is 0.063 j mass of the planet c ( 20 earth mass) on the page kepler you submitted lazarus is mass 2.8 earth for c that is making big difference.Planet c needs rv to be confirmed they have enough transits that they know it exists.

Paper is here:
Kepler's First Rocky Planet: Kepler-10b (.pdf)

Sirius_Alpha wrote:

Do you have a reference for this unconfirmed second planet? I may not be reading closely enough, but I haven't see a reference to it anywhere.

From the online Q&A:

Cygnus: What are the prospects for additional planets in the Kepler 10 star system? Any hints?

Natalie: There is actually already a very compelling signature of another potential planet in this system. There is a transit event that recurs once every 45 days and is suggestive of a planet a bit larger than 2 times the radius of the Earth.

From the first paper:

Two distinct sets of transit events were detected: 1) a 152 ± 4 ppm dimming lasting 1.811 ± 0.024 hours with ephemeris T[BJD]= 2454964.57375+0.00060−0.00082+N¤0.837495+0.000004−0.000005 days and 2) a 376±9 ppm dimming lasting 6.86±0.07 hours with ephemeris T[BJD]= 2454971.6761+0.0020−0.0023+N ¤45.29485+0.00065−0.00076 days.

Also from the paper

Quote :

There is a marginal detection (~ 2σ) of a secondary eclipse associated with KOI-72.01. At just 6 ppm (see Table 7), the flux change is not severe enough to rule out the planetary interpretation (i.e. that it is due to an occultation of a planetary companion). There is no detection of a secondary eclipse associated with KOI-72.02. The binarity tests are consistent with the planet interpretation for both transit events in the light curve of Kepler-10.

Wonder how this will all pan out with regards to this prediction about the kinds of planets Kepler will find...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12158028

Marcy on Kepler-10b: "This report... will be marked as among the most
profound scientific discoveries in human history,".

I know Corot-7b has some uncertainty concerning it's density but
that statement is way over the top.

Agreed.