Kepler-160 is a main-sequence star approximately the width of our Galactic arm away in the constellation Lyra, first studied in detail by the Kepler Mission, a NASA-led operation tasked with discovering terrestrial planets. The star, which is very similar to the Sun in mass and radius,[3][2] has three confirmed planets and one unconfirmed planet orbiting it.
Observation data Epoch J2000 Equinox J2000 | |
---|---|
Constellation | Lyra |
Right ascension | 19h 11m 05.6526s[1] |
Declination | +42° 52′ 09.4725″[1] |
Apparent magnitude (V) | 13.101 |
Characteristics | |
Evolutionary stage | G2V |
J−H color index | 0.359 |
J−K color index | 0.408 |
Variable type | ROT, Planetary transit |
Astrometry | |
Proper motion (μ) | RA: 3.476±0.032[1] mas/yr Dec.: -5.212±0.035[1] mas/yr |
Parallax (π) | 1.0385 ± 0.0183 mas |
Distance | 3,140 ± 60 ly (960 ± 20 pc) |
Details | |
Radius | 1.118+0.015 −0.045[2] R☉ |
Luminosity | 1.01±0.05[2] L☉ |
Surface gravity (log g) | 4.515[3] cgs |
Temperature | 5471+115 −37[2] K |
Metallicity [Fe/H] | -0.361 dex |
Other designations | |
Database references | |
SIMBAD | data |
KIC | data |
The star Kepler-160 is rather old, having no detectable circumstellar disk.[4] The star's metallicity is unknown, with conflicting values of either 40% or 160% of solar metallicity reported.[5][6]
Of this system (and all others) the Breakthrough Listen search for extraterrestrial intelligence found no potential technosignatures.[7]
The two planetary candidates in the Kepler-160 system were discovered in 2010, published in early 2011[8] and confirmed in 2014.[9] The planets Kepler-160b and Kepler-160c are not in orbital resonance despite their orbital periods ratio being close to 1:3.[10]
An additional rocky transiting planet candidate KOI-456.04, located in the habitable zone, was detected in 2020,[2] and more non-transiting planets are suspected due to residuals in the solution for the transit timing variations. From what researchers can tell, KOI-456.04 looks to be less than twice the size of Earth and is apparently orbiting Kepler-160 at about the same distance from Earth to the sun (one complete orbit is 378 days). Perhaps most important, it receives about 93% as much light as Earth gets from the sun.[11] Nontransiting planet candidate Kepler-160d has a mass between about 1 and 100 Earth masses and an orbital period between about 7 and 50 d.[2]
Companion (in order from star) |
Mass | Semimajor axis (AU) |
Orbital period (days) |
Eccentricity | Inclination | Radius |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
b | — | 0.05511+0.0019 −0.0037 |
4.309397+0.000013 −0.000012 |
0 | — | 1.715+0.061 −0.047 R🜨 |
c | — | 0.1192+0.004 −0.008 |
13.699429±0.000018 | 0 | — | 3.76+0.23 −0.09 R🜨 |
d | 1—100 M🜨 | — | 7—50 | — | — | — |
e (unconfirmed) | — | 1.089+0.037 −0.073 |
378.417+0.028 −0.025 |
0 | — | 1.91+0.17 −0.14 R⊕ |