University of Warwick | 2018 Mar 27
A hot, metallic, Earth-sized planet with a density similar to Mercury -- situated 260 million light-years away -- has been detected and characterised by a global team of astronomers, including the University of Warwick.
Named K2-229b, the planet is almost 20% larger than Earth but has a mass which is over two-and-a-half times greater -- and reaches a dayside temperature of over 2,000°C (2,330 Kelvin).
It finds itself very close to its host star (0.012 AU, around a hundredth of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), which itself is a medium-sized active K dwarf in the Virgo constellation. K2-229b orbits this star every fourteen hours. ...
An Earth-sized exoplanet with a Mercury-like composition - A. Santerne et al
- Nature Astronomy (online 26 Mar 2018) DOI: 10.1038/s41550-018-0420-5