CoRoT-8 is a star in the constellation Aquila at a distance of about 1055

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. At least one planet revolves around the star. CoRoT-8 is an orange dwarf which has 0.88 solar masses and 0.77 solar radius. By astronomical standards, this is already a rather young star compared to the Sun: its age is about 3 billion years. It got its name in honor of the

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 ...

space telescope, with the help of which its planetary companion was discovered. In 2010, a group of astronomers working within the

program announced the discovery of the planet CoRoT-8b in this system. It is a hot gas giant, similar in mass and size to

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant, with an average radius of about 9 times that of Earth. It has an eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 tim ...

. The planet orbits at a distance of about 0.06 AU from the parent star, while making a complete revolution in 6.21 days.

References

Aquila (constellation) K-type main-sequence stars Planetary systems with one confirmed planet {{main-star-stub