“European astronomers on Tuesday said they had found a distant star orbited by at least five planets in the biggest discovery of so-called exoplanets since the first was logged 15 years ago.
The star is similar to our sun and its planetary lineup has an intriguing parallel with own solar system, although no clue has so far been found to suggest it could be a home from home, they said.
The star they studied, HD 10180, is located 127 light-years away in the southern constellation of Hydrus, the male water snake, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said in a press release.
The planets were detected over six years using the world’s most powerful spectograph, an instrument to capture and analyze light signatures, at ESO’s telescope at La Silla, Chile.
The method consists of observing a star and seeing how the light that reaches Earth “wobbles” as a result of the gravitational pull of a passing planet.
The tiny fluctuation in light can then be used as a telltale to calculate the mass of the transiting planet.
The five detected planets are big, being the size of Neptune, although they orbit at a far closer range than our own gas giant, with a “year” ranging from between six and 600 days.
The astronomers also found tantalizing evidence that two other candidate planets are out there.
One would be a very large planet, the size of our Saturn, orbiting in 2,200 days.
The other would be 1.4 times the mass of Earth, making it the smallest exoplanet yet to be discovered. It orbits HD 10180 at a scorchingly close range, taking a mere 1.18 Earth days to zip around the star.”
Read more at Discovery (Thanks IndyAdvant)
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Hi Derren
I think it’s great that we can see a star 127 light years away but what’s the point? We’d be better off building underwater sea worlds and better ways to generate heat and power Still cool stuff, I just think it’s a waste of money.
What do you think?
Couple other things… do you write these blog posts and ever tried an en-mass twitter or blog trick?
Have a nice weekend.
Stefan
Msg from Abeo: Please check the author of the post just below the title in red to see who posts. You can find a list of just Derren’s posts using the menu bar at the top
That’s great. I really lived the “wonders if the solar system” series with Brian Cox. It’s discoveries like this that make you feel that the possibility of finding a home from home may really happen.
Sehr interessant!
Someone should tell the sun he’s got something on his face.
That’s interesting, but shouldn’t it be called a star system? Solar system is the one that has our sun (Sol) at the center. Just FYI.
As one light year currently equates to 8500 earth years. We are talking about a trip taking 1.08 million years…. A return trip in excess of 2 million years. I just don’t have the patience for this type of trip….
Does anyone have a spare time machine????
The cost of ground and space based telescopes is well worth it for the benefit.
If there is a meaning to life, it’s to explore every inch of The Universe we can.
I understand the appeal of “building undersea waterworlds” Stefan, but the idea is a bit far-fetched.
The pressure in space isn’t really much of a problem, personally i’d prefer us to concentrate almost all of humanity’s efforts to space exploration and propulsion research, but no doubt we would get a lot of good practice by learning how to cope with the pressure under the sea.
We won’t be getting anywhere near to Suns or Jupiter until we find out how to tackle that problem.