An amazing discovery has been made that gives us evidence of 9 different planets in a solar sytem that is so similar to ours, it’s been called our ‘twin’!
Scientists and astronomers alike are finding more and more exoplanets and systems that could support life like ours, very literally, daily. Fascinating!
An animation created when the system was thought to only have 7 planets:
Discovery News writes:
In 2010, a star 127 light-years away stunned the world — it had become the largest star system beyond our own, playing host to five, possibly seven, alien worlds. Now, the star (called HD 10180) is back in the headlines; it may actually have nine exoplanets orbiting it.
Interestingly, HD 10180 is a yellow dwarf star very much like the sun, so this discovery has drawn many parallels with our own Solar System. It is a multi-planetary system surrounding a sun-like star. But it is also a very alien place with an assortment of worlds spread over wildly different orbits.
It is believed that one of HD 10180’s exoplanets is small — although astronomers only know the planets’ masses, not their physical size or composition. The smallest world weighs-in at 1.4 times the mass of Earth, making it a “super-Earth.”
Read more at news.discovery.com