Posted on 01/19/2009 4:10:58 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The smallest planet around a normal star other than the Sun may be even smaller than first thought. A new analysis suggests the rocky body weighs just 1.4 Earths - less than half the original estimate. Observations over the next few months should test the prediction... MOA-2007-BLG-192-L b... was detected using a technique called microlensing, in which one star passes in front of another as seen from Earth. Light from the background star is gravitationally bent and magnified for a period of days to weeks during the event. But if the nearer star hosts a planet, the planet's gravity can give an added boost to the background star's light for a few hours... Initially, the team believed that this host star was a brown dwarf... But more recent observations suggest the parent star is actually heavier than first thought - a type of star called a red dwarf, team member Jean-Philippe Beaulieu of the Paris Astrophysical Institute reported last week... Scott Gaudi of Ohio State University in Columbus, who is not on the team, says the new measurements "give a much more robust estimate" of the mass of the planet and its host star.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
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