From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Mon Aug 30 2004 - 08:17:36 PDT
----- Original Message -----
From: esonews_at_eso.org<mailto:esonews_at_eso.org>
To: ljk4_at_msn.com<mailto:ljk4_at_msn.com>
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 7:15 AM
Subject: Fourteen Times the Earth (ESO PR 22/04)
Dear subscribers,
A European team of astronomers has discovered the lightest known planet orbiting a star other than the sun (an "exoplanet").
The new exoplanet orbits the bright star mu Arae located in the southern constellation of the Altar. It is the second planet discovered around this star and completes a full revolution in 9.5 days.
With a mass of only 14 times the mass of the Earth, the new planet lies at the threshold of the largest possible rocky planets, making it a possible super Earth-like object. Uranus, the smallest of the giant planets of the Solar System has a similar mass. However Uranus and the new exoplanet differ so much by their distance from the host star that their formation and structure are likely to be very different.
This discovery was made possible by the unprecedented accuracy of the HARPS spectrograph on ESO's 3.6-m telescope at La Silla, which allows radial velocities to be measured with a precision better than 1 m/s. It is another clear demonstration of the European leadership in the field of exoplanet research.
The full text of this press release with four photos is available at http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2004/pr-22-04.html Kind regards,
The ESO EPR Dept.
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