Alien planet Kepler-421b has 704 days in one year. That is about twice the number of Earth days to complete a year and travel an orbit. This means it's the longest year for an alien planet.
The planet was recently discovered 1,000 light years from the Earth. It was found near the 'frost line' -- that area that separates the gaseous planets from the rocky planets. It is also very far from its own star at 110 million miles so it's very cold according to astronomer David Kipping in an interview.
"Finding Kepler-421b was a stroke of luck. The farther a planet is from its star, the less likely it is to transit the star from Earth's point of view. It has to line up just right," David Kippling, author at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts further said.
The Kepler-421b is just one of the 1,800-plus exoplanets that have been discovered but it has the longest year. It's one of the farthest from its own star so it's very chilly at -135° Fahrenheit. Kepler orbits an orange type K star that is dimmer than the Earth's sun.
With its location and distance from its star, it could be an ice giant similar to Neptune or Uranus. It's neither a rocky plane nor a gas giant.
The planet is called Kepler-421b and the star is Kepler-421. The two were discovered through a space-based telescope from the Kepler observatory. The latter is a space observatory launched by NASA with the objective to discover planets like the Earth.
Kepler-421b is four times bigger than the Earth and is more similar to Uranus in size. The astronomers are expected to study the exoplanet further and be ready for publication.
What makes Kepler-421b more interesting is the fact that it doesn't move much according to Kipping. It's one of a kind so the astronomer could learn something new. Most gaseous planets also don't stay beyond the snow line but many hot giants have migrated inward unlike the Kepler.
"This is the first example of a potentially nonmigrating gas giant in a transiting system that we've found," Kipping added.
