Astronomers are expecting a large number of new planets to be discovered in the next few years, as instruments and methods to detect them get revved up. Today's announcement from the European Southern Observatory may presage things to come---the observatory said definitely five and maybe seven planets were found orbiting a sun-like star. And a video with animations and PR hype was popped up on the ESO web site quickly.
The Redorbit story starts with a quote from the AFP saying it's "the biggest discovery of so-called exoplanets since the first was logged 15 years ago." Christophe Lovis of Geneva University led the group of Swiss, French and German scientists working out of the ESO telescope in Chile. What they found was a solar system 127 light years away, in the constellation Hydrus. It contains at least five Neptune-sized planets, and probably two other planets--one Saturn-sized, and one only 1.4 times the size of earth. Before you start thinking another earth, however, this planet is very close to its sun, orbiting it every 1.2 days.
So this solar system has lots of planets, like ours does, with planets spaced in a fairly regular pattern, like ours. This discovery brings the total of planets outside our solar system to 472. The Associated Press story described the five planets as being covered with rock and ice, and measuring 13 to 25 times the mass of earth.
The image put out by ESO is an artist's rendering showing a close-up of the sky around the star (HD10180), and it was made from photographs taken of that patch of sky through blue and red filters.
--Phil Hilts
Comments
that's Cool, maybe they'll find another planet that might be capable of supporting life and then places like ARECIBO could have a better target than firing blindly out into space.