14 DAY TRIAL // This past July 21, astronomers with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics announced the discovery of a previously unknown exoplanet. The celestial body was discovered using NASA's Kepler spacecraft, hence the fact that it is now known as Kepler-421b.
In a press release detailing the find, scientists explain that, according to data at hand, this exoplanet sits at a distance of about 1,000 light-years from Earth, in the direction of the constellation Lyra.
Size-wise, Kepler-421b is similar to Uranus. It circles a type K star that is cooler and lets out less light than our sun. It is estimated that the distance between this exoplanet and its parent star is one of about 110 million miles (roughly 16.1 million kilometers).
Due to the fact that it sits rather far from its star, Kepler-421b has the longest year to have until now been documented in the case of an exoplanet. Thus, astronomers say it circles the type K star once every 704 days.
By comparison, the majority of the over 1,800 exoplanets that have been discovered over the years are located surprisingly close to their parent stars, and consequently take considerably less time to circle them, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics specialists explain.
Then again, Kepler-421b is far from being the planet with the longest year thus far identified by science. Thus, astronomers say that Mars, which is part and parcel of our solar system, goes around the sun once every 780 days, which makes it way lazier than this exoplanet.
Given the distance between Kepler-421b and its parent star, chances are that this planet is a fairly cool environment. Specifically, it is estimated that the temperature of this exoplanet is one of about -135 degrees Fahrenheit (about -92.77 degrees Celsius).
Commenting on the discovery of this exoplanet using data and images provided by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which was launched back in 2009 and has been surveying the Milky Way ever since, study leader author David Kipping stated as follows: “Finding Kepler-421b was a stroke of luck. The farther a planet is from its star, the less likely it is to transit the star from Earth's point of view. It has to line up just right.”
Furthermore, “This is the first example of a potentially non-migrating gas giant in a transiting system that we've found.”
What the researcher means to say is that, unlike other planets of this kind, which scientists suspect move towards their parent star shortly after having formed, Kepler-421b appears to have been born in the same region it now inhabits and to have no intention to migrate in the direction of the type K star.