3 super-Earths discovered around distant star: Earth 3, 4 and 5?

The temperature of the planet with the shortest orbit, HD219134b is approximately 700 degrees Kelvin (800 Fahrenheit), the authors said, meaning the planet is not in the habitable zone of its star.

The star is slightly colder and less massive than our Sunday.

With the use of their James Webb space telescope, a 21 light year distant rocky planet called HD 219134b was recently discovered by NASA.

The HD 219134b can not be seen directly by telescopes, but the star it orbits is visible to the naked eye.

While the planet is close in both size and mass to Earth, the similarities end there. If the planetary system has the right alignment it can also transit-pass between us and the star and block some of the starlight-which will reveals the size of the planet. The system is so close that astronomers already dream about taking pictures of the new “stars”.

“Transiting exoplanets are worth their weight in gold because they can be extensively characterized”, said Michael Werner, the project scientist for the Spitzer mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The Spitzer transit observations show that the radius is only 60 per cent larger than Earth, making its density consistent with a rocky composition. Two are relatively small and not too far from the star.

‘Most of the known planets are hundreds of light-years away.

But HD219134b is exciting for another reason: it is the closest transiting planet known to scientists, and thus offers a rare opportunity for further study of its composition and atmosphere against the backdrop of its star. “This one is practically a next-door neighbor”, said astronomer and study co-author Lars A. Buchhave of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Using a technique know as radial velocity (the gravity pull of the planet on its parent star) the planet’s mass was determined to be 4.5 times that of Earth. It is by far the closest transiting planet known, and likely to remain one of the closest ever. And super-Earths also are planets that have a mass higher than Earth’s but are lighter than gas giants like Neptune, Saturn or Jupiter.

With help made from a the latest areas scopes in the Canary Islands, investigators for the Roque onze chapter Muchachos Observatory recognized a stellar solution contains 3 super-Earths as well as a gasoline big directly around a pygmy coach in the collection Cassiopeia.

Spitzer data suggests the planet is about 1.6 times the size of the Earth. The researchers believe that the proximity and brightness of this Solar System will make it favorable for a detailed analysis of the physical properties of the planets, especially since it is similar to our own Solar System in that it has small inner planets and a larger outer one. “It can be considered a kind of Rosetta Stone for the study of super-Earths”.