![]() "USPPs occur preferentially around normal red dwarf stars that are smaller and cooler than our Sun," Sahu explained. How can a planet survive the scorching temperatures so close to a star? Sahu said that the star’s low temperature allows the planet to exist. "This star-hugging planet must be at least 1.6 times the mass of Jupiter, otherwise the star’s gravitational muscle would pull the planet apart," said Sahu. Located only 1.2 million kilometres from its star (roughly three times the distance between the Earth and the Moon), the planet is among the hottest ever detected, with an estimated temperature of about 1650 degrees C. The planet candidate with the shortest orbital period, named SWEEPS-10, swings around its star in 10 hours. The finding could more than double the number of planets spied with the transit technique. ![]() Nevertheless, following an exhaustive analysis, the team ruled out alternative explanations such as a grazing transit by a stellar companion that could mimic the predicted signature of a true planet. These planets are called 'candidates' because astronomers only have mass measurements for two of them.Īrtist’s impression of a Jupiter-sized planet passing in front of its parent star The planet would have to be about the size of Jupiter to block enough starlight, about 1 percent to 10 percent, to be measurable by Hubble. Instead, astronomers used Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to search for planets by measuring the slight dimming of a star due to the passage of a planet in front of it. Hubble couldn’t view the 16 newly found planet candidates directly. Our discovery also gives very strong evidence that planets are as abundant in other parts of the galaxy as they are in our solar neighbourhood." "Only the Hubble Space Telescope, with its superb resolution and sensitivity, can look across our galaxy and find planets around faint stars. "Discovering the very short-period planets was a big surprise," said team leader Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA. The results will appear in the 5 October issue of the journal Nature. Hubble’s narrow view covered a swath of sky that is no bigger in angular size than 2 percent the area of the full Moon. ![]() Hubble looked at 180,000 stars in the crowded central bulge of our galaxy. The planet bonanza was uncovered during an international Hubble survey, called the Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search (SWEEPS).
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