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Date: 02 February 2009 Satellite: COROT Depicts: Light curve revealing CoRoT-Exo-7b transiting the parent star Copyright: Courtesy of A. Léger et al. Show in archive: true
This CoRoT light curve revealed the presence of a small terrestrial planet, CoRoT-7b, orbiting its parent star. The exoplanet has a diameter less than twice that of Earth making this the smallest exoplanet radius measured yet. It orbits its parent star, (CoRoT-7: a main-sequence K-type star at a distance of about 150 pc) every 20 hours. The surface temperature is estimated to be of order 1000-1500°C.