27-08-10 ‘Seven Planets’ Discovered in New Solar System

Astronomers have discovered a new solar system that appears to have almost as many planets as our own.They found up to seven planets orbiting a star that is of a similar type to the Sun,including one that is likely to be rocky and less than 1.5 times the size of the Earth.Reporting his team’s discovery in France today,astronomer Christophe Lovis said:“We have found what is most likely the system with the most planets yet discovered.This remarkable discovery also highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research – the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets.” The star, labelled HD 10180,lies 127 light-years away from us in the constellation of Hydra,detected using a giant telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory at La Silla on a mountaintop in Chile's Atacama Desert.A highly sensitive and world-beating “planet hunter” called HARPS was used to analyse light collected by the telescope’s 3.6-meter wide mirror,or “eye on the sky” over six years.Astronomers found clear evidence for five giant planets similar in size to Uranus or Neptune in our own solar system.But there were also intriguing signs that two other planets are also present,one of which would be the smallest,or least-massive,yet found orbiting another star.The positions of the planets in the follow a pattern similar to that generally followed by our own Sun’s family,with each planet in order from the star being roughly twice as far as its sibling.