Gliese 436 b

Gliese 436 b ˈɡliːzə (sometimes called GJ 436 b, formally named Awohali) is a Neptune-sized exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf Gliese 436. It was the first hot Neptune discovered with certainty (in 2007) and was among the smallest-known transiting planets in mass and radius, until the much smaller Kepler exoplanet discoveries began circa 2010. In December 2013, NASA reported that clouds may have been detected in the atmosphere of GJ 436 b. In August 2022, this planet and its host star were included among 20 systems to be named by the third NameExoWorlds project. The approved names, proposed by a team from the United States, were announced in June 2023. Gliese 436 b is named Awohali and its host star is named Noquisi, after the Cherokee words for "eagle" and "star". Gliese 436 b was discovered in August 2004 by R. Paul Butler and Geoffrey Marcy of the Carnegie Institute of Washington and University of California, Berkeley, respectively, using the radial velocity method. Together with 55 Cancri e, it was the first of a new class of planets with a minimum mass (M sini) similar to Neptune. The planet was recorded to transit its star by an automatic process at NMSU on January 11, 2005, but this event went unheeded at the time. In 2007, Michael Gillon from Geneva University in Switzerland led a team that observed the transit, grazing the stellar disc relative to Earth. Transit observations led to the determination of its exact mass and radius, both of which are very similar to that of Neptune, making Gliese 436 b at that time the smallest known transiting extrasolar planet. The planet is about four thousand kilometers larger in diameter than Uranus and five thousand kilometers larger than Neptune and slightly more massive. Gliese 436b orbits at a distance of four million kilometers or one-fifteenth the average distance of Mercury from the Sun. The planet's surface temperature is estimated from measurements taken as it passes behind the star to be .