One of the smallest planets in a distant solar system has been discovered by astronomers at the Southern European Observatory in northern Chile.
A team of French and Swiss astronomers announced that they have found this small planet orbiting the star Gl 581 in the Libra constellation, located 20.5 light-years away from Earth. Gl 581 is a red dwarf star, which is the most common type of star in our galaxy.
While the star has a mass only one-third that of the Sun, the planet orbiting it is only as large as Neptune—17 times the size of Earth. Since 80 out of the 100 nearest stars to Earth are red dwarfs, astronomers are eager to find out if they have planets orbiting them.
“Our results indicate that planets are likely to exist around the smallest stars. This also suggests that red dwarfs are ideal targets for searching for exoplanets,” said Xavier Delfosse from the Astrophysical Laboratory in Grenoble, France.
Among the 170 exoplanets known to date, this newly discovered planet is among the smallest. It orbits at a distance of 6 million km from its star and takes 5.4 days to complete one orbit.
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