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New Extra-Solar Planet Found tomsastroblog.com Another extra solar planet was found, and this one is around a star in the constellation Cancer called 55 Cancri. That particular star already has four known planets and the exciting thing is the newly found planet is just 116.7 million km or 72 million miles from the star; compare that with our location 92 (+/-) million miles from Sol. It may be a bit closer to its star than we are to ours, but Cancri 55 is just a bit dimmer than ours too. That puts it in what is known as the habitable zone, that zone were temperatures are sufficient to allow water to pool on a solid surface. That does NOT mean there is life on the new planet but it’s possible. The planet has an estimated mass of 45 times of ours and orbits it’s star about every 260 days. The speculation is this is a planet similar to Saturn.
I’m telling you, I just never cease to be amazed at how good these people are getting at finding extra-solar planets. If I can get up early enough I should try to get an image of the star. I of course wouldn’t see any planets, but I could show it to some school groups and say look that star has planets it’s an easy mag 5.95. Next morning I have a good sky I’ll do it right after I catch another image of the comet. To read more about the new planet as well as how they found it go here.
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