Shadow
07-19-2012, 10:03 PM
Thirty-three light-years away, in the constellation Leo the lion, astronomers say they have found a world considerably smaller than Earth (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/video/voyage-distant-planet-16805903), orbiting a dim red-dwarf star.
That's something to think about. While scientists have confirmed the existence of more than 700 so-called exoplanets (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/super-earth-found-orbiting-distant-star-liquid-water/story?id=15506125) since 1995, most of them have been giant -- many considerably larger than Jupiter. This new world, say the researchers who found it, may be only 5,200 miles across, about two thirds as large as Earth.
"People have been picking at the low-hanging fruit, since Jupiter-sized planets are easier to see," said Kevin Stevenson, the young researcher at the University of Central Florida who led the team making the find. "Now we're really pushing the limits of what our telescopes can find."
The newly found world is, for now, called UCF-1.01, and Stevenson and his colleagues found it with NASA's Spitzer space telescope in Earth orbit. It orbits a star called GJ 436. They spent a year watching it to confirm that it was indeed a distant world. They are publishing their find online Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal.
http://news.yahoo.com/planet-found-smaller-earth-orbiting-distant-star-203543868--abc-news-tech.html
That's something to think about. While scientists have confirmed the existence of more than 700 so-called exoplanets (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/super-earth-found-orbiting-distant-star-liquid-water/story?id=15506125) since 1995, most of them have been giant -- many considerably larger than Jupiter. This new world, say the researchers who found it, may be only 5,200 miles across, about two thirds as large as Earth.
"People have been picking at the low-hanging fruit, since Jupiter-sized planets are easier to see," said Kevin Stevenson, the young researcher at the University of Central Florida who led the team making the find. "Now we're really pushing the limits of what our telescopes can find."
The newly found world is, for now, called UCF-1.01, and Stevenson and his colleagues found it with NASA's Spitzer space telescope in Earth orbit. It orbits a star called GJ 436. They spent a year watching it to confirm that it was indeed a distant world. They are publishing their find online Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal.
http://news.yahoo.com/planet-found-smaller-earth-orbiting-distant-star-203543868--abc-news-tech.html