'Super Earth' Discovered at Nearby Star

August 25, 2004
By Robert Roy Britt, Senior Science Writer
Space.com

Image: An artist's impression of the "super Earth" orbiting a Sun-like star. Scientists say the planet is probably rocky, rather than being made of ice and gas, and it likely has a thin atmosphere. But they can't say anything else about its appearance or composition. Image © SPACE.com. Credit: Elizabeth Lagana

link to story, john
space.com...

new image taken of 'super earth'



external image

At that close to star it can't have lot of gas, or it looses it fast (astonomically).

Here's nice site about known exos. (althought year old)
exoplanets.org...

[edit on 26-8-2004 by E_T]

Duplicates, Duplicates, Duplicates..


www.abovetopsecret.com...

What is the basis for that? Venus has a nice thick atmosphere, and one of the 200 some extra-solar planets discovered, one enormous gas giant was positioned closer to it's parent star than where earth sits.

[edit on 26-8-2004 by Der Kapitan]

I am surprised it took so long to find it. I don't know how these things are usually found, but do they normally start searching for closest to home first or do they start out far and work their way in?

Hey E_T, you always seem to have good info on astronomy, can you tell me what you do for a living?

What the heck, is MC Escher in charge of making planets now??

LOL, no its a picture of cybertron...the transformers home planet.

If this is a duplicate get one of the mods to close it down.

Actually there are many Jupiter sized exos orbiting their stars closer than Mercury orbits our sun.



Thanks.
I'm not professional astronomer, if you thought that, it's just one of my hobbies.
But quite fitting hobby, my first name is Esa.
(those who didn't get it... use Google)

That pic of me in "official" suit is only from here.

[edit on 26-8-2004 by E_T]

I believe that the giant gas planets orbiting very close to the sun loose their atmosphere very fast that they leave a thin trail of gas. Am I correct?

This was found by looking at a distant star through a (Amateur) telescope for awhile, and then they saw an object pass is front of the star and shabam, Planet Discovered.