NASA spies Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting Sun-like star
Astronomers have spotted the closest thing yet to the first true ‘Earth twin’ — a small planet orbiting the bright star Kepler 452, at a distance where liquid water could exist.
Astronomers using a telescope "Kepler" discovered exoplanet, the surface of which presumably have liquid water. This is the first Earth-like planet that is in the "habitable zone" of a star similar to our sun. On the opening of the mission, experts said at a press conference, and briefly with the study can be found in the material Nature.
The planet is called Kepler-452b, it is the second of the exoplanets discovered the star Keprler-452, located in the constellation Cygnus. The distance to the star is 1,400 light-years, it is somewhat brighter than the sun. According to scientists, the mass of Kepler-452b 60 percent more than the mass of the Earth. This makes it more promising exoplanet analogue of Earth than previously discovered worlds orbiting cooler stars.
Similarly measure the mass novoobnaruzhennoy "Earth" fails, but the simulation suggests that it is about five times heavier than Earth. Year on Kepler-452b lasts 385 days. Age of the star around which ekspoplaneta is 6 billion years old, making it the 1.5 billion years older than the sun. Presumably, the planet has the same age.
Following the evolution of the main sequence stars, Keprler-452 is getting hotter and brighter.
To search for extrasolar planets Telescope "Kepler" uses the transit method. It lies in the long-term observation of the stars and the light of a plurality of search downturns in their splendor. If such setbacks occur periodically, it may indicate that the cause is the darkening passage across the disk of the stars exoplanets. An alternative transit method is the analysis of periodic red shift in the spectrum of the stars. It is caused by the rolling of stars with exoplanets around a common center of mass. The transit method is available only for space telescopes, while the red shift can be analyzed with the Earth. Both methods are easier to find bigger planets like the gas giants. For this reason, their share among the candidates in the first exoplanet was very high, Earth-like planets began to find mostly the last decade.
