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Kepler-10b is the first confirmed terrestrial planet to have been discovered outside the Solar System.〔 Discovered after several months of data collection during the course of the NASA-directed Kepler Mission, which aims to discover Earth-like planets crossing in front of their host stars, the planet's discovery was announced on January 10, 2011. Kepler-10b has a mass of 3.33±0.49 Earth masses and a radius of 1.4 Earth radii. However, it lies extremely close to its star, Kepler-10, and as a result is too hot to support life. Its existence was confirmed using measurements from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. ==Nomenclature and history== Kepler-10, the star that hosts Kepler-10b, is located 560 light-years from our solar system in the Draco constellation. It is approximately the same size as the Sun, with an estimated age of 12 billion years.〔 Planet Kepler-10b was the first planet to be discovered in the orbit of its star. For this, it was designated the star's ''b'' planet. The star, in turn, was named for the Kepler Mission, a NASA-led operation aimed at discovering terrestrial planets that transit, or cross in front of, their host stars with respect to Earth. The planet's discovery was announced to the public on January 10, 2011. The transit method of discovering exoplanets relies upon carefully monitoring the brightness of a star. If a planet is present and crosses the line of sight between Earth and the star, the star will dim at a regular interval by an amount that depends upon the radius of the transiting planet. In order to measure the mass of a planet, and rule out other phenomena that can mimic the presence of a planet transiting a star, candidate transiting planets are followed up with the radial velocity method of detecting extrasolar planets.〔 Kepler-10b's discovery was based on eight months of data collected with the Kepler telescope from May 2009 to January 2010. The planet's first transits were observed in July 2009. According to the collected data, Kepler-10 dimmed by one part in ten thousand every 0.83 days.〔〔 Kepler-10 was the first star in the field of view of the Kepler telescope identified as capable of harboring a small transiting planet, and was considered a high priority target for ground based radial velocity observations intended to confirm the mass of Kepler-10b. Radial velocity measurements with the Keck I telescope taken intermittently between August 2009 and August 2010 revealed a periodic Doppler shift in the spectrum of Kepler-10 consistent with a planet of the nature observed by Kepler, confirming the planet's existence and allowing its mass to be determined.〔 The planet's discovery was announced to the public on January 10, 2011.〔 On January 13, 2011, 3 days after the planet's discovery was announced, ''The Economist'' published an article suggesting “Vulcan” as an unofficial name for the planet, after both the hypothetical planet, and the Roman god of the same name. In September 2011, the detection of secondary transit and phases were announced. This allowed to determine the temperature and albedo of the planet. This is the first terrestrial exoplanet with observed phases. Detection of phases was possible due to extreme day/night side temperature variations and the amount of starlight the planet receives due to its proximity to the host star.〔( The orbital phases and secondary transit of Kepler-10b - A physical interpretation based on the Lava-ocean planet model ) : Daniel Rouan, Hans J. Deeg, Olivier Demangeon, Benjamin Samuel, Céline Cavarroc, Bruce Fegley, Alain Léger〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kepler-10b」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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