Thanks BenLurkin.
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Posted on 10/31/2017 8:32:19 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The planet NGTS-1b is situated 600 light-years from our solar system, according to a statement from the University of Warwick, and it is a gas giant about the size of Jupiter. Its star, on the other hand, is just half the mass and radius of the sun. The planet orbits its star at 3 percent the distance from the Earth to the sun, and it whips around a full orbit every 2.6 Earth days.
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The system's star is a small, dim M-dwarf, which is the most common type of star in the sky. Red dwarfs burn their fuel much more slowly than sun-like stars, so they can have lifetimes of trillions of years. According to the new work, this is the third time a gas giant has been seen orbiting an M-dwarf — but this planet is by far the largest.
...tricky enough just to spot planets orbiting M-dwarfs, researchers are much more used to seeing M-dwarfs orbited by rocky planets, according to a statement from the Royal Astronomical Society. In February, for instance, researchers found seven rocky planets orbiting the small, dim TRAPPIST-1. NGTS-1 is larger than TRAPPIST-1, but researchers are still unsure how the star could have gathered enough material to build a large gas giant during the system's formation, they said in the statement.
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Next-Generation Transit Survey monitored certain spots in the sky for months with red-sensitive cameras to catch any changes in brightness to stars in its field of view, according to the statement from the University of Warwick. Researchers saw the particular M-dwarf dipping in brightness every 2.6 days, suggesting it had a planetary companion. Then, they confirmed the planet's gargantuan size by measuring its radial velocity — how much the star "wobbles" during each orbit from its companion's gravitational pull.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
But, still smaller than Algore.
Thought for sure you were going to say.....
Dammit! If I hadn’t had that sixth beer!
Well, they say opposites attract.
Maybe the star is orbiting the planet in this case ;-)
They wouldn’t need a Copernicus!
Based on the size of the Universe (which may be infinite) everything, every arrangement of celestial bodies, every composition of matter has occurred and does exist, no matter how probable or improbable.
Just name them Mutt and Jeff, Laurel and Hardy, Rosie and Hillary.
Since one light-year, the *distance* light travels in a year at its speed of 186,000 miles per second, works out to about 5.9 Trillion miles, that's 3,540 TRILLION, or 3.54 Quadrillion, miles from earth.
600 x 5.9 = 3,540
save for later
Thanks BenLurkin.
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