ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER NEW PLANET

[Anonymous]

Astronomers discover new planet
Astronomers
in the US say they have found a new planet in orbit around a star 41
light years from Earth.The discovery brings to five the number of
planets orbiting the star, 55 Cancri, the most found to date in a
single solar system outside our own.Astronomers have found more than
250 planets outside our own solar system – the team behind the latest
discovery have found more than anyone else.The new planet is a gas
planet about 45 times the mass of the Earth.Their latest find is a
fifth planet to add to the four they had already discovered around 55
Cancri, a double or binary star in the constellation of Cancer.

Gas giant
If
the new planet, which has mild surface temperatures, has a rocky moon
or moons around it, say the astronomers, then theoretically they could
support liquid water.But it is the bigger picture that is really
intriguing these planet hunters.

They say this quintuple planet system has many similarities to our own.
The
planets orbit a star which is similar in age and mass to our own Sun
and the system also boasts its own gas giant – a planet four times the
mass of our own Jupiter in a similar orbit to Jupiter.What they have
not yet found is a rocky planet like the Earth or Venus, but according
to Professor Geoff Marcy, of the University of California, Berkeley,
who led the work, that may only be a question of time and
technology.”There is an intriguing, mysterious gap between the fourth
planet out around 55 Cancri and the Jupiter-like planet that’s far
away,” he says.”In that gap, we don’t know what there is. Our current
technology would be able to detect big planets like Neptune, Saturn and
Jupiter. We don’t see any of them.”So if there are any planets there,
they must be smaller, the size of the Earth.”In fact, it’s a little
hard to imagine that there’s just nothing there in this big gap. So the
suggestion is there might be small rocky planets, like Venus, Mars or
Earth.”Of course, none of these planets can actually be seen – the
astronomers use tiny wobbles in the movement of the star to detect the
presence of planets tugging on the star as they encircle it.But you can
see the star itself – 55 Cancri – easily, with only a pair of
binoculars, at the right time of year and with a clear night sky. 

[Author]

November 7, 2007 at 11:25 AM