Thursday, July 03, 2003
Celestial Soulmate? Jupiter-like Planet Found in Solar System Similar to Ours
An international team of planet hunters have found the closest thing yet to a solar system similar to our own out in space; a Jupiter-like planet orbiting its parent star in a Jupiter-like orbit.
Researchers with the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in New South Wales, Australia detected a large planet orbiting HD 70642, a Sun-like star situated 90 light-years from Earth out toward the Puppis constellation. The planetary find was announced Thursday in Paris at the "Extrasolar Planets: Today and Tomorrow" conference.
Penny is a member of the United Kingdom portion of the UK-Australian team at the AAT seeking extrasolar systems that resemble our own planetary neighborhood. Hugh Jones, of Liverpool John Moores University and leader of the UK contigent, presented the discovery at the Paris conference.
The planet circling HD 70642 is about twice as massive as Jupiter and orbits its star from a distance of 3.3 astronomical units (AU), which would place it somewhere between Mars and Jupiter in our Solar System. One AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, about 93 million miles (149 million kilometers), and Jupiter typically circles the Sun from an orbit of 5.2 AU. The new planet is faster than Jupiter too, completing one orbit in only six years, about half the time it takes Jupiter to round the Sun.
But what sets HD 70642's giant planet apart from other extrasolar worlds -- more than 100 of which have been found -- is its orbit. The newly found planet travels around its star on a path that, like Jupiter, is roughly circular, meaning there's room for smaller, Earth-like planets to orbit HD 70642 without the danger of being flung out of the planetary system.
Planet hunter Paul Butler, who established the extrasolar world-seeking team at AAT, told SPACE.com "If you put an Earth-like planet in this new system [around HD 70642] it would stay," Butler said.
The difference is critical for researchers bent on the search for planetary systems that mirror our own Solar System, and in doing so learn more about how the Earth formed and life began on our planet. It is even more critical for scientists hoping to find another Earth-like planet with the potential to sustain life, extraterrestrial or otherwise.
"I think the hunt for these planets is the greatest adventure in astronomy right now," Penny said.
Permalink |
Link to External Source Article
Previous Blogger UFO News Articles
Previous HTML UFO News Articles. Predating 05-15-2003
Share 
 
 Xerpi
RSS Feed
Blogroll Me!
|
