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Astronomers Discover a Nearly Earth-sized Planet

04/22/2009 12:55AM

Astronomers Discover a Nearly Earth-sized Planet

Well-known exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor today announced the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, ā€œeā€, in the famous system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of our Earth. The team also refined the orbit of the planet Gliese 581 d, first discovered in 2007, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist. These amazing discoveries are the outcome of more than four years of observations using the most successful low-mass-exoplanet hunter in the world, the HARPS spectrograph attached to the 3.6-meter ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile.


Comments:

<br>Thanks to Bill Rose for finding this very interesting News Item.<br><br>Thanks,<br><br>Guy Pirro