The Spanish instrument called CAFE ( Calar Alto Fiber-fed Échelle spectrograph , for its acronym in English), installed in the 2.2-meter telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory (Almería, Spain), has discovered its first exoplanet that has been christened such as Kepler 91b .
The study, led by Jorge Lillo-Box and David Barrado, researchers from the Department of Astrophysics at the Center for Astrobiology – constituted by the Spanish space agency (INTA) and the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) – affirms that the exoplanet has just recently discovered could be in the last moments of its existence, before being eaten by the red giant star called KIC 8219268 .
According to experts, Kepler 91b is a gas giant , it has a slightly elliptical orbit and its atmosphere appears to be inflated, probably due to the high radiation coming from its huge star. It is the closest known planet to a red giant star and, according to CAFE data, it has a mass of 1.09 times that of Jupiter, something like 15 times that of Earth .
The exoplanet in question is 3,500 light years from Earth , outside our solar system, and has been discovered thanks to data from NASA's Kepler space telescope and the CAFE spectrograph. After its confirmation, the first find of this Spanish-German astronomical observatory will be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters .
