Word: planetsized
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Back in the mid-1990s, when astronomers were just beginning to find new planets around distant stars, nearly every new discovery got front-page headlines. Today, with the extrasolar-planet count up to about 400, it takes something extraordinary to make news.
Astronomers have been finding planets around distant stars for more than a decade now, and the count is currently around 400. But the vast majority of these so-called exoplanets have been seen indirectly - by their gravitational effects or by the dimming caused when they pass in front of their...
This discovery is part of a five-year planet-hunting campaign designed to solve those problems with four keys: first, the Subaru telescope, which sits at an elevation of nearly 14,000 ft. on the summit of the extinct volcano Mauna Kea and is by itself one of the world...
Even with all that going for them, the discovery came as a surprise, because the instruments were still being tested out. "We were thrilled to see something so early in the process," says McElwain. What's especially thrilling is that GJ 758 B could be as close to its star...
That's not as good as the ultimate goal: to take an image of a second Earth, in an Earthlike orbit. For that, though, you really need to go into space. But the discovery of GJ 758 B is an extraordinary step, and if the project lives up to its...