From EsoCast in 1080p, comes the announcement of a rash of new planet discoveries. Astronomers using ESO's leading exoplanet hunter HARPS have today announced more than fifty newly discovered planets around other stars. Among these are many rocky planets not much heavier than the Earth. One of them in particular orbits within the habitable zone around its star.
Among the new planets just announced by scientists, sixteen are super-Earths - rocky planets up to ten times as massive as Earth. This is the largest number of such planets ever announced at one time.
A planet in orbit causes its star to regularly move backwards and forwards as seen from Earth. This creates a tiny shift of the star's spectrum that can be measured with an extremely sensitive spectrograph such as HARPS.
In their quest to find a rocky planet that could harbor life, astronomers are now pushing HARPS even further. They have selected ten well-studied nearby stars similar to our Sun. Earlier observations... more
Among the new planets just announced by scientists, sixteen are super-Earths - rocky planets up to ten times as massive as Earth. This is the largest number of such planets ever announced at one time.
A planet in orbit causes its star to regularly move backwards and forwards as seen from Earth. This creates a tiny shift of the star's spectrum that can be measured with an extremely sensitive spectrograph such as HARPS.
In their quest to find a rocky planet that could harbor life, astronomers are now pushing HARPS even further. They have selected ten well-studied nearby stars similar to our Sun. Earlier observations... more
