anon
22.04.09, 18:33
Well-known exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor today announced the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, "e", 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-metre ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile.
"The holy grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the 'habitable zone' - a region around the host star with the right conditions for water to be liquid on a planet's surface", says Michel Mayor from the Geneva Observatory, who led the European team to this stunning breakthrough.
Planet Gliese 581 e orbits its host star - located only 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra ("the Scales") - in just 3.15 days. "With only 1.9 Earth-masses, it is the least massive exoplanet ever detected and is, very likely, a rocky planet", says co-author Xavier Bonfils from Grenoble Observatory.
ESO - ESO 15/09 - Lightest exoplanet yet discovered (http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2009/pr-15-09.html)
"The holy grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the 'habitable zone' - a region around the host star with the right conditions for water to be liquid on a planet's surface", says Michel Mayor from the Geneva Observatory, who led the European team to this stunning breakthrough.
Planet Gliese 581 e orbits its host star - located only 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra ("the Scales") - in just 3.15 days. "With only 1.9 Earth-masses, it is the least massive exoplanet ever detected and is, very likely, a rocky planet", says co-author Xavier Bonfils from Grenoble Observatory.
ESO - ESO 15/09 - Lightest exoplanet yet discovered (http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2009/pr-15-09.html)