For the first time, India joined a select group of countries which have found planets around stars with the discovery of what is known as a sub-Saturn or super-Neptune sized planet having a radius that is six times that of earth, Isro announced.
The path-breaking discovery was made by a team led by Abhijit Chakraborty of the Ahmedabadbased Physical Research Laboratory. The newly discovered planet was found around a Sun-like star, according to Isro. It goes around the star in about 19.5 days.
The discovery was made by measuring the mass of the planet using the indigenously designed ‘PRL Advance Radial-velocity Abu-sky Search’ spectrograph, integrated with a 1.2 m telescope at PRL’s Gurushikhar Observatory in Mount Abu. This is the first of its kind spectrograph in the country, which can measure the mass of a planet going around a star.
Isro said very few such spectrographs exist around the world (mostly in the US and Europe) that can do such precise measurements.
Chakraborty said the new planet, which is 600 light years away from Earth, was between the size of Saturn and Neptune. “It is closer to Neptune,” he said, pointing out that the new planet had 27 times the mass of Earth and six times its radius.
The surface temperature of the new planet is around 600°C as it is very close to the host star. This might make it uninhabitable, but such a discovery is of importance for understanding the formation mechanism of such super-Neptune or sub-Saturn kind of planets that are too close to the host star.
The path-breaking discovery was made by a team led by Abhijit Chakraborty of the Ahmedabadbased Physical Research Laboratory. The newly discovered planet was found around a Sun-like star, according to Isro. It goes around the star in about 19.5 days.
The discovery was made by measuring the mass of the planet using the indigenously designed ‘PRL Advance Radial-velocity Abu-sky Search’ spectrograph, integrated with a 1.2 m telescope at PRL’s Gurushikhar Observatory in Mount Abu. This is the first of its kind spectrograph in the country, which can measure the mass of a planet going around a star.
Isro said very few such spectrographs exist around the world (mostly in the US and Europe) that can do such precise measurements.
Chakraborty said the new planet, which is 600 light years away from Earth, was between the size of Saturn and Neptune. “It is closer to Neptune,” he said, pointing out that the new planet had 27 times the mass of Earth and six times its radius.
The surface temperature of the new planet is around 600°C as it is very close to the host star. This might make it uninhabitable, but such a discovery is of importance for understanding the formation mechanism of such super-Neptune or sub-Saturn kind of planets that are too close to the host star.
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