Planetary system · 1 known planet · Cygnus

Kepler-452

Its star: above the horizon all nightHighest after dark 20:20 · southwest · 81°

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Where is Kepler-452?

Times for LondonChange city

Look southwest, about 81° up at 20:20 in Cygnus.

Rises: Always up
Highest: 19:47
Sets: Never
Best after dark: 20:20 · 81°

Can I see Kepler-452?

No. The planets of Kepler-452 can’t be seen with the eye, binoculars or any amateur telescope: they are lost in their star’s light. What you can do is point toward the star.

From London tonight, the star Kepler-452 is above the horizon all night. It’s highest soon after dark, around 20:20, in the southwest at 81°.

Why is Kepler-452 interesting?

Kepler-452 has 1 known planet, discovered in 2015 by the primary transit method.

What can you see?

Eyes

Direction only

Not visible.

Binoculars

Not visible.

Telescope

The star is around magnitude 13.7 and needs a telescope of about 250 mm or more and a detailed chart. The planets themselves can’t be seen with any backyard telescope.

What you’re likely to see, not what a space telescope photographs.

About

Kepler-452 is a Sun-like star about 1,800 light-years away in Cygnus. In 2015, NASA announced Kepler-452b, a planet about one and a half times the size of Earth orbiting in its star’s habitable zone every 385 days, a year very close to ours.

It was nicknamed “Earth’s older cousin”, because its star is similar to the Sun but older. Later analyses of the Kepler data questioned how securely the planet’s signal can be confirmed, so its status is debated.

Its star is a little older and brighter than the Sun, so the planet would receive slightly more energy than Earth does. The planet’s mass has not been measured, so we don’t know whether it is rocky.

Kepler-452b was found by the transit method: the Kepler space telescope saw the star dim slightly, once per orbit, as the planet passed in front of it. With only a few transits in the data, faint signals like this one are hard to confirm.

Even if the planet is real, it is far beyond the reach of any current telescope to study in detail.

The Kepler-452 system

Known planets of Kepler-452 (catalog values from exoplanet.eu)
Planet	Mass	Radius	Orbit	From star	Found	Method
Kepler-452 b	—	1.63 R⊕	384.8 days	1.046 AU	2015	Primary Transit

M⊕ / R⊕ = Earth masses / radii; M♃ / R♃ = Jupiter. Masses from radial velocity are often minimum masses. Data: The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, exoplanet.eu (CC BY 4.0).

Questions

Can I see Kepler-452b?

No. Even its host star is faint.

Is Kepler-452b a second Earth?

It orbits a Sun-like star with a similar year, but it is larger than Earth and its nature is unknown. Some studies question whether the planet is confirmed.

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Sources: The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia (CC BY 4.0); star chart: Wikidata (CC0). Positions computed for your place and time with astronomy-engine. Data & Licences