Astronomers discover Earth and Sun's 'mirror image'
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The 'KOI-456.04', which is less than twice the Earth's size, orbits 'Kepler-160' at a distance similar to that between Earth and Sun and within the habitable zone.
Astronomers believe they've discovered an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star, about 3,000 light-years away.
The 'KOI-456.04', which is less than twice the Earth's size, orbits 'Kepler-160' at a distance similar to that between Earth and Sun and within the habitable zone.
The amount and type of light that 'KOI-456.04' receives from its star is similar to what Earth gets.
And it does so with a star-planet distance that could permit planetary surface temperatures conducive to life. The object was discovered by a team led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen.
Its host star, called Kepler-160, actually emits visible light; the central stars of almost all other exoplanets, on the other hand, emit infrared radiation, are smaller and fainter than the sun and therefore belong to the class of red dwarf stars.
The Earth-like exoplanet is one of the worlds orbiting the star Kepler-160, which is about 3,000 lightyears from our star system. Unlike most of the stars that host roughly-Earth-sized exoplanets, scientists learned that Kepler-160 gives off light in the visible spectrum rather than infrared light — a crucial aspect, they believe, of being habitable.