NASA telescope confirms discovery of closest rocky exoplanet

Astronomers have confirmed the discovery of the nearest rocky planet outside of our solar system.

NASA astronomers discovered the closest rocky planet outside our solar system.

The planet, called HD 219134b, orbits a star smaller than the sun-a slightly cooler orange dwarf that’s visible in the night sky in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was confirmed with observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, and a study on the findings was just accepted for publication by the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.

HD 219134b is transiting, NASA speak for crossing in front of its star, which makes it flawless for scientists to study.

“Transiting exoplanets are worth their weight in gold because they can be extensively characterized”, Michael Werner, project scientist for the Spitzer mission, said in a statement on Thursday.

In February 1961, David Latham, now a senior astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, was living in a one-room apartment with his wife.

Around 60 percent larger than Earth, it sits squarely in the Goldilocks zone of its star, where life could exist because it is neither too hot nor too cold to support liquid water, according to the US space agency NASA. Given the right orientation, the orbit of the planet dims the detectable light of its star, which is captured by observatories revealing not only the planet’s size but also hints about its composition. The article mentioned the fact that NASA’s Kepler satellite mission recently revealed a new planet, but that the Kepler plan is much farther away from Earth than HD 219134b.

Researchers believe that its surface may be doted with volcanoes because it looks like a rocky planet and its mass and size point into that direction.

Dr Watson added: “We’d like to follow this up by watching the star to get a precise probing of its atmosphere”.

Planet 452b takes 385 days to orbit its star, just a little more than Earth takes for a one-year lap.

According to team leader Ati Motalebi, HD 219134b could be a target for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2018. This means it passes in front of its star from Earth’s perspective. The lead scientist for the Spitzer detection of the transit goes on to say, “Now we have a local specimen to study in greater detail”. Simply put, to reach any of the so called “closest” exoplanets is a task beyond the capabilities of current human technologies. It may not be as Earth-like as other previously discovered planets, but it opens room for possible exploration that isn’t plausible to other discovered planets. (HD 219134b’s sibling planets have not been observed to transit, so their density cannot be determined at the moment.).