Kepler-22b is an exoplanet orbiting the Sun-like star Kepler-22, about six hundred light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. NASA announced its confirmation on 5 December 2011, using data from the Kepler space telescope, which detects planets by the slight dimming of a star as they pass in front of it. It was the first planet found by Kepler to orbit within the habitable zone of a Sun-like star, the range of distances at which liquid water could exist on a surface. It is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth, so it may be a gaseous or ocean world rather than a rocky one, and its mass is unknown. It completes an orbit in about 290 days.
Before and after
- 26 November 2011Launch of Curiosity
- 26 November 2011Launch of Mars Science Laboratory
- 1 December 2011Launch of JTBC
- 4 December 2011Premiere of Black Mirror
- 5 December 2011Discovery of Kepler-22 b
- 17 December 2011Death of Kim Jong-il
- 18 December 2011Death of Václav Havel
- 1 January 2012Founding of Aix-Marseille University
- 2012Higgs boson
More in Universe & space
- 4 October 1957Launch of Sputnik 1
- 14 September 1974Discovery of Leda
- 28 July 1989Discovery of Galatea
- 15 May 2005Discovery of Hydra
- 10 September 2005Discovery of Dysnomia
- 19 January 2006Launch of New Horizons
The era
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