Washington: A Jupiter-size planet has been
discovered beyond the solar system nearly 1,500 light years
away by a French spacecraft.
The spacecraft designed to discover new worlds has made
one of its most significant finds yet -- COROT 9 b -- a planet
that looks like a cousin to those in our own celestial
backyard, journal Nature reported.
The planet is less massive than Jupiter and orbits a
star; called COROT 9, at about the same distance Mercury
orbits the sun.
The new world is of fairly average size, but it is the
most temperate exoplanet yet whose properties are well known
in orbit around a sunlike star, said lead study author Hans
Deeg, an astronomer at Spain's Institute of Astrophysics of
the Canary Islands.
Residing 1,500 light-years away in the constellation
Serpens Cauda, COROT 9 b has about the same diameter as
Jupiter and is about 85 per cent as massive.
It keeps a much greater distance from its host star than
the other transiting planets discovered to date, almost all of
which reside in scalding hot orbits less than 10 million
kilometers from their stars, scientific American said.
The newfound world circles its star at about 60 million
kilometers, leaving it with a relatively mild temperature that
Deeg's group estimates to be between minus 20 degrees Celsius
and 150 degrees C, depending on its atmospheric makeup.
For comparison, many exoplanets are so close to their
stars that their temperatures exceed 1,000 degrees C.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, March 18, 2010, 17:32