CoRoT-1b (previously named CoRoT-Exo-1b) is a transiting

extrasolar planet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992 around a pulsar, and the first detection around a main-sequence star was in 1995. A different planet, first detect ...

approximately 2,630

light-year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equal to exactly , which is approximately 9.46 trillion km or 5.88 trillion mi. As defined by the International Astr ...

s away 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 first constellati ...

Monoceros Monoceros ( Greek: , "unicorn") is a faint constellation on the celestial equator. Its definition is attributed to the 17th-century cartographer Petrus Plancius. It is bordered by Orion to the west, Gemini to the north, Canis Major to the s ...

. The planet was discovered orbiting the yellow dwarf

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

CoRoT-1 in May 2007. The planet was the first discovery by the French-led

CoRoT CoRoT (French: ; English: Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) was a space telescope mission which operated from 2006 to 2013. The mission's two objectives were to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly t ...

Mission.

Discovery

CoRoT-1b was identified as the best planetary candidate from the CoRoT spacecraft initial run from February 6 to April 2, 2007. Follow-up photometry with the

Wise Observatory The Florence and George Wise Observatory (IAU code 097) is an astronomy, astronomical observatory owned and operated by Tel Aviv University. It is located west of the town of Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev desert near the edge of the Ramon Crater, an ...

s 1.0 m telescope and at the

Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope The Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) is located near the summit of Mauna Kea mountain on Hawaii's Big Island at an altitude of 4,204 meters (13,793 feet), part of the Mauna Kea Observatory. Operational since 1979, the telescope is a Pri ...

eliminated many of the possible false positives for the transit signal. 9

radial velocity The radial velocity or line-of-sight velocity of a target with respect to an observer is the rate of change of the vector displacement between the two points. It is formulated as the vector projection of the target-observer relative velocity ...

measurements of CoRoT-1 were made at

Haute-Provence Observatory The Haute-Provence Observatory (OHP, ) is an astronomical observatory in the southeast of France, about 90 km east of Avignon and 100 km north of Marseille. It was established in 1937 as a national facility for French astronomers. Ast ...

in March–April and October 2007 with the SOPHIE échelle spectrograph. The radial velocity data matched the CoRoT

light curve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph (discrete mathematics), graph of the Radiance, light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude (astronomy), magnitude of light received on the ''y''-axis ...

and supported the planetary nature of CoRoT-1b and eliminated other possibilities such as background stars, grazing

eclipsing binaries A binary star or binary star system is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved as separate stars us ...

, or a triple system. The discovery was publicly announced on May 3, 2007 and submitted for publication on January 4, 2008.

Characteristics

The planet is a large

hot Jupiter Hot Jupiters (sometimes called hot Saturns) are a class of gas giant exoplanets that are inferred to be physically similar to Jupiter (i.e. Jupiter analogue, Jupiter analogues) but that have very short orbital periods (). The close proximity to t ...

, about 1.49 times the radius of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

and approximately 1.03 times as massive, based on ground observations of the star. Its large size is due to its low density combined with the intense heating of its parent star causing the outer layers of the atmosphere to bloat.

Observation of phases

In May 2009 CoRoT-1b became the first extrasolar planet for which optical (as opposed to

infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

) observations of phases were reported. These observations suggest that there is not significant heat transfer between the (

tidally locked Tidal locking between a pair of co-orbiting astronomical bodies occurs when one of the objects reaches a state where there is no longer any net change in its rotation rate over the course of a complete orbit. In the case where a tidally locked ...

) night and day sides of the planet.

References

External links

* * {{Sky, 06, 48, 19.17, -, 03, 06, 07.78, 1560 Hot Jupiters Monoceros Transiting exoplanets Giant planets Exoplanets discovered in 2007 1b

Discovery

Characteristics

Observation of phases

See also

References

External links