|
Solar system's 'look-alike' found |
|
|
Written by admin
|
 Astronomers have discovered a planetary system orbiting a distant star which looks much like our own.
They found two planets that were close matches for Jupiter and Saturn
orbiting a star about half the size of our Sun. Martin Dominik, from St
Andrews University in the UK, said the finding suggested systems like
our own could be much more common than we thought. And he told a major
meeting that astronomers were on the brink of finding many more of
them. The St Andrews researcher said this planetary system, and others
like it, could host terrestrial planets like Earth. It was just a
matter of time before such worlds were detected, he explained. Dr
Dominik told BBC News: "We found a system with two planets that take
the roles of Jupiter and Saturn in our Solar System. These two planets
have a similar mass ratio and similar orbital radius and a similar
orbital period. "It looks like this may have formed in a similar way to
our Solar System. And if this is the case, it looks like [our] Solar
System cannot be unique in the Universe. There should be other similar
systems out there which could host terrestrial planets." Dr Dominik
presented his work at the Royal Astronomical Society's National
Astronomy Meeting in Belfast. Ultimate goal: The newfound planetary
system, which orbits the star OGLE-2006-BLG-109L, is more compact than
our own and is about five thousand light-years away. Although nearly
300 extrasolar planets have been identified, astronomers have
consistently failed to find planetary systems which resemble our own.
Dr Dominik said only 10% of systems discovered so far are known to host
more than one planet. But he explained that all the techniques
currently used to find exoplanets were strongly biased towards
detecting gas giant planets orbiting at short distances from their
parent stars. The OGLE planets were found using a technique called
gravitational micro-lensing, in which light from the faraway planets is
bent and magnified by the gravity of a foreground object, in this case
a another star.
Source: BBC News
|
