Kepler-1229 is a

red dwarf ''Red Dwarf'' is a British science fiction comedy franchise created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which primarily consists of a television sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave since 2009, gaining a cult following. T ...

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

located about away from the Earth in the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the e ...

of Cygnus. It is known to host a super-Earth

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

within its habitable zone, Kepler-1229b, which was discovered in 2016.

Nomenclature and history

Prior to Kepler observation, Kepler-1229 had the

2MASS The Two Micron All-Sky Survey, or 2MASS, was an astronomical survey of the whole sky in infrared light. It took place between 1997 and 2001, in two different locations: at the U.S. Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Arizona, and ...

catalogue number 2MASS J19495680+4659481. In the Kepler Input Catalog it has the designation of KIC 10027247, and when it was found to have a transiting planet candidate it was given the Kepler object of interest number of KOI-2418. Planetary candidates were detected around the star by NASA's Kepler Mission, a mission tasked with discovering planets in transit around their stars. The transit method that Kepler uses involves detecting dips in brightness in stars. These dips in brightness can be interpreted as planets whose orbits pass in front of their stars from the perspective of Earth, although other phenomenon can also be responsible which is why the term planetary candidate is used. Following the acceptance of the discovery paper, the Kepler team provided an additional moniker for the system of "Kepler-1229". The discoverers referred to the star as Kepler-1229, which is the normal procedure for naming the exoplanets discovered by the spacecraft. Hence, this is the name used by the public to refer to the star and its planet. Candidate planets that are associated with stars studied by the Kepler Mission are assigned the designations ".01" etc. after the star's name, in the order of discovery. If planet candidates are detected simultaneously, then the ordering follows the order of orbital periods from shortest to longest. Following these rules, there was only one candidate planet were detected, with an orbital period of 86.829 days. The designation ''b'', derives from the order of discovery. The designation of ''b'' is given to the first planet orbiting a given star, followed by the other lowercase letters of the alphabet. In the case of Kepler-1229, there was only one planet, so only the letter ''b'' is used. The name Kepler-1229 derives directly from the fact that the star is the catalogued 1,229th star discovered by ''Kepler'' to have confirmed planets.

Stellar characteristics

Kepler-1229 is a

star that is approximately 54% the mass of and 51% the radius of the Sun. It has a temperature of 3784 K and is roughly 3.72 billion years old. In comparison, the Sun is about 4.6 billion years old and has a temperature of 5778 K. The star is slightly poor in metals, with a

metallicity In astronomy, metallicity is the abundance of elements present in an object that are heavier than hydrogen and helium. Most of the normal physical matter in the Universe is either hydrogen or helium, and astronomers use the word ''"metals"'' as a ...

( e/H of about −0.06, or about 87% of the amount of iron and other heavier metals found in the Sun. The star's luminosity is somewhat normal-low for a star like Kepler-1229, with a luminosity of around 4.8% of that of the solar luminosity. The star's apparent magnitude, or how bright it appears from Earth's perspective, is 15.474. Therefore, it is too dim to be seen with the naked eye.

Planetary system

The only known planet transits the star; this means that the planet's orbit appear to cross in front of their star as viewed from the Earth's perspective. Its inclination relative to Earth's line of sight, or how far above or below the plane of sight it is, vary by less than one degree. This allows direct measurements of the planet's periods and relative diameters (compared to the host star) by monitoring the planet's transit of the star. Kepler-1229b is a super-Earth, likely rocky, with a radius of 1.4 , and it orbits well within the habitable zone. In terms of stellar flux, radius, and equilibrium temperature, Kepler-1229b is similar (or an analog in some terms) to the potentially habitable exoplanet Kepler-62f.

References

{{Sky, 19, 49, 56.81, +, 46, 59, 48.2 Planetary systems with one confirmed planet M-type main-sequence stars Planetary transit variables Cygnus (constellation) 2418