Second Earth, Gliese 581 c
Astronomers using the ESO's 3.6m telescope, have discovered a planet orbiting Gliese 581, a red dwarf star, that bear a striking resemblance to Earth. The planet has a radius 50% larger than Earth, with five times more mass and is 14 times closer to its star. Its orbit allows the planet to complete an orbit in 13-days. At that proximity to its star, you'd think the planet would be hot, but because Gliese 581 is smaller, cooler and is less luminous that our star, this new planet may actually have comfortable temperatures, and possibly even liquid water.
Gliese 581 is just over 20-light-years away from us, in the constellation Libra. It belongs to the group of most prevalent and stable stars in our galaxy. Due to their low luminosity however, they are difficult to observe. While the newly discovered planet is gaining a lot of press lately for being Earth-like, the chances that the system could support life as we know it, is fairly small. While red dwarfs are stable, handing around for a lot longer than stars like our Sun, they exist with much variability, emit light mostly in the infrared and would most likely lock habitable planets close to them in a tidal orbit.
For more, see: The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets : XI. An habitable super-Earth (5 MEarth) in a 3-planet system. [PDF]
Gliese 581 is just over 20-light-years away from us, in the constellation Libra. It belongs to the group of most prevalent and stable stars in our galaxy. Due to their low luminosity however, they are difficult to observe. While the newly discovered planet is gaining a lot of press lately for being Earth-like, the chances that the system could support life as we know it, is fairly small. While red dwarfs are stable, handing around for a lot longer than stars like our Sun, they exist with much variability, emit light mostly in the infrared and would most likely lock habitable planets close to them in a tidal orbit.
For more, see: The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets : XI. An habitable super-Earth (5 MEarth) in a 3-planet system. [PDF]
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