Planet hunters have detected an extrasolar planet that is only four times the mass of Earth, making it the second smallest exoplanet ever discovered. Astronomers using the 10-meter Keck I telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii found the un-poetically named HD156668b, which has a mass of roughly 4.15 Earth masses. It orbits its parent star in just over four days and is located roughly 80 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Hercules. This adds to the growing list of so-called "Super-Earths" now being found.
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© nancy for Universe Today, 2010. |
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Full story at http://www.universetoday.com/2010/01/07/second-smallest-exoplanet-found/
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