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Indian scientists discover a new planet, 600 light years away

Indian scientists discover a new planet, 600 light years away

Ahmedabad: Scientists of the Physical Research Laboratory– India’s premier institute of space research, Ahmedabad has discovered a super-Neptune size exoplanet. The newly discovered planet is said to be about 27 times the mass of Earth and six times the radius of Earth.

The new planet revolves around a Sun-like star, some 600 light years away from Earth, it is found.

The discovery was credited by taking into consideration the mass of the planet using the PRL Advance Radial-velocity Abu-Sky Search, nick named as PARAS spectrograph. It has been joined with 1.2m telescope at PRL’s Observatory in Mount Abu.

With this discovery, India has become eligible to join a league of countries which has discovered a number of planets around stars.

The host star is about 600 light years away from the Earth, it is claimed.

The Indian scientists who found this new planet, explains that the surface temperature of the planet is around 600 degrees Celsius. Given the fact that it is very close to the host star, it is safe to say that the new planet is about seven times nearer than the host star of our planet system.

Neveretheless, its features make the planet inhabitable,but the discovery itself is of importance.

The new discovery will immensely help understand the formation mechanism of such kind of planets, which are very close to the host star. Only a few spectrographs that can take measurements correctly are found in a few locations. They are mostly found in the USA and in the European countries.

This new planet has been named as EPIC 211945201b.

In the beginning, the source was identified to be a planetary candidate from NASA photometry because it was transiting. It happens when the planet body join in between the star and the observer on Earth. Whenever it goes around the star, it blocks a tiny amount of star-light, always.

It is claimed that now on wards by measuring the amount of light blocked by the planet body, the scientists can measure the diameter or size of the planet.

The journey of discovery by PRL team was not without a hurdle along the way. They had encountered a number of problems related with the calculations, which were not sufficient to confirm the planetary nature of the system.

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