NASA is announcing a huge milestone: 5,000 planets detected beyond our Solar System.
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NASA is announcing a huge milestone: 5,000 planets detected beyond our Solar System.
What is an exoplanet?
- An exoplanet is any planet beyond our solar system. Most orbit other stars, but free-floating exoplanets, called rogue planets, orbit the galactic center and are untethered to any star.
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In 1992, after decades of fruitless searching and retracted studies, astronomers discovered the first two exoplanets. They were spotted around an inhospitable pulsar 2,300 light-years away.
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Key-highlights of the planet
- These planets are predominantly super-Earth and sub-Neptune planets, bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, which means they are a mix of rocky and volatile-rich.
- There are also a couple of Jupiter-sized planets and even a super-Jupiter.
K2-384
- The announcement even comes with an intriguing series of five worlds around the star K2-384.
- The star is faint and cool and the planets are rocky, drawing comparisons to TRAPPIST-1, perhaps the most exciting star to astronomers in the hunt for life beyond Earth.
- Only two planets were previously known in the K2-384 system. One of them, K2-384 b, is only slightly larger than Earth.
- However, it is not listed as a potentially habitable planet currently.
- A sibling planet, K2-384 f, is twice the radius of Earth.
- Because of its size and distance from its star, it's an ideal target for astronomers to stare at, as it passes in front of its planet, and attempt to gain insight into what its atmosphere might be made of.
