Five new planets have been discovered outside our solar system, all orbiting a sun-like star located within the constellation Aquarius, nearly 620 light years from Earth. The alien worlds are considered super-Earths, sizing in at two to three times larger than our own blue planet.
All five exoplanets are likely scorchingly hot: Each planet comes incredibly close to its star, streaking around in just 13 days at most — a whirlwind of an orbit compared with Earth’s 365-day year.
Five new planets have been discovered outside our solar system, all orbiting a sun-like star located within the constellation Aquarius, nearly 620 light years from Earth. The alien worlds are considered super-Earths, sizing in at two to three times larger than our own blue planet.
All five exoplanets are likely scorchingly hot: Each planet comes incredibly close to its star, streaking around in just 13 days at most — a whirlwind of an orbit compared with Earth’s 365-day year.
The planets also appear to orbit their star in concentric circles, forming a tightly packed planetary system, unlike our own elliptical, far-flung solar system. In fact, the size of each planet’s orbit appears to be a ratio of the other orbits — a configuration astronomers call “resonance” — suggesting that all five planets originally formed together in a smooth, rotating disc, and over eons migrated closer in toward their star.
These new findings have been accepted to the Astrophysical Journal and were presented today by researchers from MIT and Caltech at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Continue reading at MIT.
Image via MIT.
