Kepler-186 and the Solar System
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</p><p>The diagram compares the planets of our inner solar system to Kepler-186, a five-planet star system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The five planets of Kepler-186 orbit an M dwarf, a star that is is half the size and mass of the sun.
</p><p>The Kepler-186 system is home to Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet orbiting a distant star in the habitable zone—a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet's surface. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars and signals a significant step toward finding a world similar to Earth.
</p><p>The size of Kepler-186f is known to be less ten percent larger than Earth, but its mass and composition are not known. Kepler-186f orbits its star once every 130 days, receiving one-third the heat energy that Earth does from the sun. This places the planet near the outer edge of the habitable zone.
</p><p>The inner four companion planets each measure less than fifty percent the size of Earth. Kepler-186b, Kepler-186c, Kepler-186d and Kepler-186e, orbit every 4, 7, 13 and 22 days, respectively, making them very hot and inhospitable for life as we know it.
</p><p>The Kepler space telescope infers the existence of a planet by the amount of starlight blocked when it passes in front of its star. From these data, a planet's radius, orbital period and the amount of energy recieved from the host star can be determined.
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This derived version does not make any speculative assumptions of the actual appearance planet Kepler-186f itself, which therefore is displayed by a white ball, in deviation of the artistic and imaginative view of the original picture.
NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech
2014-04-11 11:25:16
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