Rocky Planet: Kepler 10b

Artist concept of Kepler-10b
Image courtesy of NASA

The Kepler Spacecraft, after nearly 8 months of collecting data (May 2009 – January 2010), discovered an exoplanet, Kepler 10b, that orbits a star other than our sun. It is a rocky planet much like our Earth and it is about 1.4 times the size of Earth. The discovery is a milestone in identifying other planets in the Universe that could potentially have life like we do on Earth. However, Kepler 10b is more than 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun making it an unlikely candidate for life as we know it. Join the search at http://www.galaxyzoo.org/!