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exoplanet |
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extrasolar planetalso called exoplanetPlanet that orbits a star other than the Sun. The existence of extrasolar planets, many light-years from Earth, was confirmed in 1992 with the detection of three bodies circling a pulsar. The first planet revolving around a more sunlike star, 51 Pegasi, was reported in 1995. Over 200 stars with one or more planets are known. Current detection methods, based on the planets' gravitational effects on the stars they orbit, have revealed only planets much more massive than Earth; some are several times the size of Jupiter. A number of them have highly elliptical orbits, and many are closer to their stars than Mercury is to the Sun. These findings have raised questions regarding astronomers' ideas of how Earth's solar system formed and how typical it is. exoplanet [‚ek·sō′plan·ət] (astronomy) How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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Let's wait until the star-to-planet distance of a future exoplanet ranges from that of Venus to Mars and the mass is no more than twice that of Earth or Venus. The two other telescopes in the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES) network reside at Palomar Observatory near Escondido, Calif. The newly detected planets are the latest in a flurry of exoplanet discoveries--at least 50 have been found since 1995. |
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