UC Berkeley

Kepler-1656b is a 5 RÅ planet with an orbital period of 32 days initially detected by the prime Kepler mission. We obtained precision radial velocities of Kepler-1656 with Keck/HIRES in order to confirm the planet and to characterize its mass and orbital eccentricity. With a mass of 48±4 M·, Kepler-1656b is more massive than most planets of comparable size. Its high mass implies that a significant fraction, roughly 80%, of the planet's total mass is in high-density material such as rock/iron, with the remaining mass in a low-density H/He envelope. The planet also has a high eccentricity of 0.84 ± 0.01, the largest measured eccentricity for any planet less than 100 M·. The planet's high density and high eccentricity may be the result of one or more scattering and merger events during or after the dispersal of the protoplanetary disk.