Astronomers Discover, Image New Planet in Planetary System Similar to Our Own

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ScienceDaily (Dec. 9, 2010) — An international team of astronomers has discovered and imaged a fourth giant planet outside our solar system, a discovery that further strengthens the remarkable resemblances between a distant planetary system and our own.

The research is published Dec. 8 in the advance online version of the journal Nature.

The astronomers say the planetary system resembles a supersized version of our solar system.

"Besides having four giant planets, both systems also contain two 'debris belts' composed of small rocky or icy objects, along with lots of tiny dust particles," said Benjamin Zuckerman, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and co-author of the Nature paper.

Our giant planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and our debris belts include the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and the Kuiper Belt, beyond Neptune's orbit.


Four planets orbit star HR 8799: Three planets (b, c, and d) and newly discovered planet "e" orbit a star some 129 light years from Earth. The curved arrows represent the coming 10 years of orbital motion for the planets. 20 AU refers to 20 times the distance from the Earth to the sun. This image was obtained using the W.M. Keck II telescope at Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii. (Credit: NRC-HIA, C. Marois, and Keck Observatory)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101208172320.htm