Astronomers discover 32 new 'exoplanets'

[n2doc]

By Joel Achenbach
Monday, October 19, 2009; 11:23 AM
Astronomers are finding planets by the dozen. A team of European astronomers announced Monday morning that they had found 32 new "exoplanets" orbiting distant stars.

More importantly, the planets were found around a variety of stars, suggesting that planets are common in our galaxy. Gas giant planets were found orbiting "metal-poor" stars -- those lacking in elements other than hydrogen and helium -- which until now had been considered unlikely places for planets to form.

The first exoplanet was found in 1995. With this latest batch, the census tops 400. The lowest-mass planet announced Monday has a mass about five times that of the Earth. Astronomers hope someday to find signs of an Earth-mass planet in an Earth-like orbit -- circling a star at a distance that allows for the possibility that water might be liquid at the planet's surface.

The astronomers from the European Southern Observatory who made Monday's announcement used a spectrograph to study about 2,000 relatively nearby stars. The program, known as the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), measures the slight change in starlight caused by an orbiting planet, which cannot be seen directly.

more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/19/AR2009101900956.html?hpid=artslot

[roguevalley]

1. thank you for this. I love science

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[whopis01]

3. It does not count. It is not an exoplanet. n/t