Kepler-8 b

Kepler-8b is the fifth of the first five exoplanets discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which aims to discover planets in a region of the sky between the constellations Lyra and Cygnus that transit (cross in front of) their host stars. The planet is the hottest of the five. Kepler-8b was the only planet discovered in Kepler-8's orbit, and is larger (though more diffuse) than Jupiter. It orbits its host star every 3.5 days. The planet also demonstrates the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect, where the planet's orbit affects the redshifting of the spectrum of the host star. Kepler-8b was announced to the public on January 4, 2010 at a conference in Washington, D.C. after radial velocity measurements conducted at the W.M. Keck Observatory confirmed its detection by Kepler.

==Nomenclature and history== The Kepler-8b planet is named because it was the first planet discovered in the orbit of Kepler-8. The star itself (and by extension, its planet) was named after the Kepler spacecraft, a NASA-run satellite that searches for terrestrial planets between constellations Cygnus and Lyra that transit, or cross in front of, their host stars with respect to Earth. This crossing slightly dims the star at a regular interval, which is used to determine if the cause of the fluctuation in brightness is indeed due to a planetary transit. The planet was first noted as a potential transit event by the Kepler telescope, and was originally designated as KOI 10.01. Follow-up observations by the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer at Hawaii's W.M. Keck Observatory yielded additional information about the planet, including its mass and radius. Kepler-8b was the fifth planet discovered by the Kepler telescope. The first three planets in Kepler's field of view had already been confirmed, and were used to test Kepler's accuracy.