New Jupiter-sized planet discovered
Thursday, 24 Jul 2008 14:01
Artist's impression of the satellite CoRoT in orbit around the Earth
Scientists have discovered a new planet about the same size as Jupiter beyond the solar system.
The planet, named CoRoT-Exo-4b, is thought to be about one billion years old and takes about 9.2 days to orbit its host star.
This is one of the longest periods of any transiting planet ever found.
The discovery, announced today at an international astronomy conference at the
University of St Andrews, was made by the European team behind the CoRoT space mission.
Launched in December 2006, CoRoT is the first space mission designed to search for extra-solar planets.
The satellite uses transits, the tiny dips in a star's flux when a planet passes in front of it, to detect and measure planets. This is backed up by extensive ground-based observations.
"CoRoT will no doubt find many more transiting planets, and by systematically measuring their host stars' rotation periods we will gain valuable insight into how stars interact with their planets," commented Dr Suzanne Aigrain from the University of Exeter, who led the analysis of the photometric data.
St Andrews' astronomer Dr Martin Dominik added: "Within less than 15 years the count of planets orbiting stars other than the sun has risen from none to over 300.
"Some of these detections carried surprises that led to shake-ups of our understanding about the way planets form.
"As the first space-based mission searching for extra-solar planets, CoRoT has now demonstrated its capability for looking into planet-star interactions. The new findings provide reason for the scientists currently gathering in St Andrews to revise their theories - again."