01 Oct 2016

Kepler-20 is a system about 950 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. It is made of an old Sun-like star (about 8.8 billion years old, 91% of the mass of the Sun and 94% of its radius) and at least six planets.

Planets b to f were discovered in 2011 by Kepler thanks to their transits. Kepler-20 g was discovered by radial velocities with HARPS-N and announced in August 2016 by a team including astronomers from the Observatory of Geneva. The outermost planet is about as far from Kepler-20 as Mercury is from the Sun. Therefore, given their sizes or masses, all these planets are probably hot super-Earths or hot Neptunes.