Possible "habitable zone" planetary system discovered only 20 light years away

From RedOrbit and Science News Astronomers Discover Lightest Exoplanet Yet

Astronomers claim to have discovered an exoplanet that is the most similar to Earth in terms of mass than any previously discovered.

Found in the constellation Libra, the planet known as Gliese 581 represents about twice the mass of Earth.

Astronomers have previously identified some 300 exoplanets, but most are much larger than Earth.

“This is by far the smallest planet that’s ever been detected,” said Michael Mayor, from the Geneva Observatory, Switzerland.

“This is just one more step in the search for the twin of the Earth.

“At the beginning, we discovered Jupiter-like planets several hundred times the mass of the Earth; and now we have the sensitivity with new instruments to detect very small planets very close to that of the Earth,” he told BBC News.

Mayor worked alongside an international team of scientists who made the observation using the low-mass-exoplanet hunting device known as the HARPS spectrograph, which is attached to the 3.6 meter ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile.

“The holy grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the ‘habitable zone’ – a region around the host star with the right conditions for water to be liquid on a planet’s surface,” Mayor said in a statement.

“With only 1.9 Earth-masses, it is the least massive exoplanet ever detected and is, very likely, a rocky planet”, said co-author Xavier Bonfils from Grenoble Observatory.

Although the planet passes too close to its star for life to be possible, scientists claim that another planet in the system may be.

Previous observations using the HARPS showed that the host star was known to harbor a system with a Neptune-sized planet and two “super-Earths”.

Gliese 581 d was discovered two years ago with a mass of about seven times that of Earth. It orbits its parent star in 66.8 days, according to astronomers.

“Gliese 581 d is probably too massive to be made only of rocky material, but we can speculate that it is an icy planet that has migrated closer to the star,” said team member Stephane Udry.

“‘d’ could even be covered by a large and deep ocean – it is the first serious ‘water world’ candidate,” she added.

Sophisticated modern technology allows astronomers to observe exoplanets by studying the tiny wobble in star motion. The discovery of low-mass red dwarf stars like Gliese 581 adds potential of finding other low-mass exoplanets in the habitable zones, scientists said.

“With similar observing conditions an Earth-like planet located in the middle of the habitable zone of a red dwarf star could be detectable,” said Bonfils. “The hunt continues.”

“It is amazing to see how far we have come since we discovered the first exoplanet around a normal star in 1995 – the one around 51 Pegasi,” says Mayor. “The mass of Gliese 581 e is 80 times less than that of 51 Pegasi b. This is tremendous progress in just 14 years.”

The international team’s findings will be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

From Science News:

“The object, a mere 20.5 light-years away, could be as tiny as 1.9 Earths and isn’t likely to exceed twice that amount.”

Enlarge Image

This diagram shows the position of the four planets in the Gliese 581 system. The newly found, innermost body is Gliese 581 e, the smallest exoplanet yet discovered. The habitable zone (blue region), where water could exist as a liquid, clearly includes the outermost planet, Gliese 581 d.