New class of planets

WASHINGTON – Astronomers have discovered a new class of planets outside the solar system that hug their parent stars so tightly they take less than a day to complete an orbit.

Using Nasa’s orbiting Hubble telescope, astronomers found between eight and 16 new planets near the centre of the Milky Way that orbit their parent stars in as few as 10 hours. At 26 000 light-years away, they are the most distant planets yet found and a further indicator others are probably scattered throughout the Milky Way.”This allows us to say with a high degree of confidence that there are billions of planets in our galaxy,” Mario Livio, from the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore, said at a news conference yesterday.A light year is the distance that light travels in one year – about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).About 200 planets have been discovered so far, many of them gas giants similar to Jupiter locked in a close orbit to their parent stars.Those “hot Jupiters” can be eight times closer to their parent stars than Mercury is to the sun.The newly discovered planets fit within that category, except they move even more quickly around their parent stars, which are smaller than the sun.Surface temperatures on those “ultra-short period planets” are about 3 000 degrees F, said Kailash Sahu, a Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer who led the team.Their parent stars are so nearby they fill up one-third of the sky from the horizon to the zenith, Sahu said.Nampa-ReutersAt 26 000 light-years away, they are the most distant planets yet found and a further indicator others are probably scattered throughout the Milky Way.”This allows us to say with a high degree of confidence that there are billions of planets in our galaxy,” Mario Livio, from the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore, said at a news conference yesterday.A light year is the distance that light travels in one year – about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).About 200 planets have been discovered so far, many of them gas giants similar to Jupiter locked in a close orbit to their parent stars.Those “hot Jupiters” can be eight times closer to their parent stars than Mercury is to the sun.The newly discovered planets fit within that category, except they move even more quickly around their parent stars, which are smaller than the sun.Surface temperatures on those “ultra-short period planets” are about 3 000 degrees F, said Kailash Sahu, a Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer who led the team.Their parent stars are so nearby they fill up one-third of the sky from the horizon to the zenith, Sahu said.Nampa-Reuters