Talk:Kepler-16b

Circumbinary planet
All of the major news articles report Kepler-16b to be the first confirmed example of a circumbinary planet, whereas that article cites three four other examples of systems with a circumbinary planet. Is anyone able to shed some light on this? &mdash; Super-Magician (talk • contribs • count) 04:11, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Hope this helps. From the NYT source: While some double-star systems, of which there are billions in the galaxy, have been suspected to harbor planets, those smaller bodies have never been seen.

“This is a direct detection; it removes all doubt,” said Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who led the discovery team.
 * Basically it's saying they've found a few maybes but this is a spot-on confirmed. Daniel Simanek  (talk • contribs) 04:38, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The use of the word "confirmed" is rather ambiguous then. Surely direct detection by observing a transit is stronger proof than detection via other means, but the other articles do not make this distinction very clear if there is in fact such a distinction to be made (i.e., why should the past discoveries be any less "confirmed" than this one?). I will consider bringing this up on the respective talk pages. &mdash; Super-Magician (talk • contribs • count) 06:11, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
 * PSR B1620-26 b is the first confirmed circumbinary planet. --Artman40 (talk) 17:51, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Please check epoch. I fill planetbox, but I am not sure that BJD 2455... is correct epoch. OverQuantum (talk) 17:20, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

More Info
Does anyone know if the Kepler gas giant type planet is sufficiently far enough away from its primary (central) star that it could be considered in an orbit similiar to Jupiters or Saturns? We already know that the Kepler planet is 3/4 the distance (the distance from the earth to the sun) from its binary secondary star when the secondary star orbits the primary and the kepler planet and the secondary star are at their closet points? This is interesting because if the Kepler planet has any icy moons, these moons could have the seasonality of periodic earthlike winter spring thaws every "Kepler 16B year," prompting the possiblity of it being in a habitable zone.209.183.55.42 (talk) 17:02, 16 September 2011 (UTC)209.183.55.42 (talk) 17:05, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
 * From : Kepler-16b orbits at about .7 AU from the center of mass, which is about the distance between Venus and the Sun. As for being habitable, it is the size of Saturn, so gravity would likely crush any life near the rocky surface (that is just conjecture on my part). Also the source says that the planet would not get hotter than 200 K (−73 °C or −100 °F). To give a comparison, the coldest recorded temperature on Earth is −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F). Daniel Simanek  (talk • contribs) 17:18, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The report says that this is the equilibrium temperature assuming a Bond albedo of 0.2-0.5, similar to Saturn. Maybe a rocky moon could be a bit darker, have a greenhouse effect from its atmosphere and so forth? Wnt (talk) 23:32, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah shame. That kind of rules out liquid water on an icy moon.....  For some reason I was under the impression the primary star in Kepler system had another star orbiting its primary star much like a planet would orbit. That is why I was thinking the any gas giant moons of the Kepler solar system might experience seasonality. Thankyou. 166.187.99.102 (talk) 15:58, 18 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Now for the next quesiton, have we tracked down any stars that orbit another star along with other planets, just as a planet would orbit a star in a typically earth sun based solar system?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.187.99.102 (talk) 15:54, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * HD 188753 (unconfirmed) and 16 Cygni are the closest. Cuddlyopedia (talk) 05:20, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very interesting reading there!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.129.119.22 (talk) 14:19, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Query page title
The title of this page is the informal name for the planet, the formal designation being Kepler-16 (AB)-b (although the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia has it as Kepler-16 (AB) b). In the paper announcing the discovery, the discoverers state: "Following the convention of Ref. 22, we can denote the third body Kepler-16 (AB)-b, or simply “b” when there is no ambiguity." Query whether to move the contents of this page to one with the formal name as the title, or whether simply to note the formal name in this article? Cuddlyopedia (talk) 05:01, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Since most of the sources refer to the object as Kepler-16b, I think that it should remain the name of the article, but I do think we should redirect and mention the formal name. Daniel Simanek  (talk • contribs) 06:48, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Done. Cuddlyopedia (talk) 11:04, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

For the most part when the brackets convention is used, a hyphen is NOT given (e.g. the NN Serpentis paper ). As far as I am aware, this convention was proposed in, where the hyphen is not used. The use of the hyphen seems to be a variant form, the EPE designation is closer to the system as proposed (with an additional space between the (AB) and b). 46.126.76.193 (talk) 12:03, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I would just like to point out there is no such thing as a formal designation for exoplanets, as the IAU has so far refused to record them. The common name appears to be Kepler-16b, Kepler-16 (AB) b or Kepler-16 (AB)-b are just variants which contain a bit more information on the system. ChiZeroOne (talk) 12:21, 21 October 2012 (UTC)