kepler- 16b

Kepler- 16b

Kepler-16b was the Kepler telescope’s first discovery of a planet in a “circumbinary” orbit– meaning that it circles two stars, as opposed to one star . Kepler-16b would have two sunsets if you could stand on its surface, as many would make a reference to the fictional planet Tatooine from the star wars franchise. This planet is likely cold, about the size of Saturn and gaseous, though partly composed of rock. It lies outside its two stars’ “circumstellar habitable zone,'' where liquid water could potentially exist. And its stars are cooler than our sun, probably making this great planet lifeless. When the discovery was announced in 2011, Bill Borucki, who is a now-retired NASA principal investigator for Kepler at Ames Research Centre, Moffett Field, California, said finding the new planet might actually broaden the prospects for life in our galaxy. Its planet mass is 0.333 Jupiters and it's planet radius is 0.754 x Jupiter. Kepler- 16b's orbital period is 228.8 days, as it currently orbits at 0.7048 AU. It was discovered by the transit method in 2011.