More Earth-like planets discovered around Sun-like stars

William Atkins
Monday, 14 December 2009 21:16

Science - Space

Five Earth-like planets (and maybe two additional ones) orbiting Sun-like stars have been discovered (and announced in and around December 14, 2009) by an international team of astronomers lead by an Australian and American. Such discoveries add to the eventual hope (and maybe even expectation) that scientists will discover life on one of them.


Planets that orbit stars other than the Sun are called exosolar planets. As of December 10, 2009, according to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, 407 of these exosolar planets, also called exoplanets, have been discovered.

Most of these exoplanets are much larger than the Earth. However, a few are Earth-like, being of a similar size and mass to the Earth.

Astronomers are especially interested in these exoplanets that are Earth-like and orbiting stars that are Sun-like because they feel that the potential for life on these planets is higher than other exoplanets that are many times larger than Earth.

Star: 61 Virginis

The first three planets are orbiting the star 61 Virginis (61 Vir), which is within the constellation Virgo. The star is being called “virtually a twin of the Sun.” [Telegraph.co.uk: “Discovery of new planets raises hopes of other life in universe”]

These three newly discovered planets range in mass from 5.3 to 24.9 times the mass of the Earth, whose mass is approximately 5.9736 × 10²⁴ kilograms. [Statistics provided by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)]

61 Virginis is about 27.8 light-years away from Earth.

Page two talks about the second star that was found to have a planet orbiting about it.