Part 6/12:
- Host Star: An orange main-sequence star (K-type), slightly smaller and cooler than the Sun
K2-141 is located about 61 parsecs away in the constellation Aquarius, with a surface temperature of around 4,599 K, compared to the Sun’s 5,778 K. The star's age estimates range from 1.6 to nearly 13 billion years.
An Extremely Close Orbit
What makes K2-141b extraordinary is its orbit: it circles its star at about 0.00716 astronomical units (roughly 1.07 million km). To put that in perspective, Earth orbits at 1 AU from the Sun—about 149.6 million km. Mercury, the closest planet to our Sun, orbits at about 0.307 AU, still more than 40 times farther away than K2-141b.