The first planet discovered by the Kepler telescope is approaching doomsday

NEW JERSEY – Planet the first exoplanet found telescope Kepler space, officially named Kepler 1658b, is threatened by doomsday. Planet Kepler 1658b is expected to be destroyed as it moves towards the center of its solar system.

The Kepler telescope was launched in 2009 on a mission to find an exoplanet that has been observed passing in front of its star. The first potential planet spotted by the telescope was initially dismissed as a false alarm, but in 2019 astronomer Ashley Chontos and colleagues proved it was real.

However, right now, Chontos estimates that the fate of the planet Kepler 1658b is in danger of being destroyed, aka doomsday, because it is moving towards the center of the solar system. “Tragically it pivots on its parent star,” Princeton University’s Chontos said as quoted by sciencenews on Monday (12/19/2022).

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The planet, which is about the size of Jupiter, is extremely hot and orbits its star every three days. In follow-up observations from 2019 to 2022, the planet continued to pass in front of the star earlier than expected. “Eventually it will be engulfed,” Chontos and colleagues said in letters to the Astrophysics Journal on Dec. 19, 2022.

The combined data from Kepler and other telescopes show that the planet is getting closer and closer to its star. Planet Kepler 1658b is estimated to be around 2.5 million years old before facing a fiery death.

“You can see that the intervals between transits are shrinking, very slowly but very consistently, at a rate of 131 milliseconds per year,” said astrophysicist Shreyas Vissapragada of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. in Massachusetts.

That doesn’t seem like much. But if this trend continues, the planet will only have 2 million or 3 million years to live. “For something that’s been around for 2 to 3 billion years, that’s pretty short,” Vissapragada said.

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If the life span of this planet were more than 100 human years, it would have more than a month left. Studying Kepler 1658b as it disintegrates will help explain the life cycles of similar planets.

“By studying how orbits shrink over time, we can get a better understanding of the fate of all planets,” said Vissapragada.

(wib)