The Iron Core and Molten Magma Oceans of Exoplanet Kepler-10b
Discovered in January 2011 by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope , Kepler-10b holds a historic position in extrasolar planetary science as the first unambiguously confirmed rocky exoplanet. Located approximately 560 light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco , this extreme terrestrial world orbits a Sun-like G-type star (Kepler-10). While earlier exoplanetary detections predominantly identified massive gas giants, precision transit photometry combined with follow-up radial velocity measurements from the W. M. Keck Observatory allowed astronomers to compute the precise radius and mass of Kepler-10b, confirming a physical structure composed predominantly of iron and silicate rock. With a radius roughly 1.47 times that of Earth and a mass measured at approximately 3.26 Earth masses, Kepler-10b possesses a mean bulk density of roughly 8.8 grams per cubic centimeter. This density significantly exceeds Earth’s average bulk ...