Friday, May 04, 2007
COROT finds its first exoplanet
Image Credit: NASA, ESA and G. BaconCOROT, the European space telescope dedicated to observing transiting exoplanets, has found its first planet. The planet, COROT-Exo-1b, is in orbit around a star roughly 1500 light years from us. It is 1.78 times Jupiters mass, and screams around its Sun in 1.5 days. This makes it one of the "Hot Jupiters".
By itself this is not so exciting, we have lots of hot Jupiters. The good news is that the scope may be as much as 10 times more accurate than expected. This means that rocky terrestrial planets orbiting red dwarfs are well within its reach. The question now is, will they turn COROT onto Gliese 581?
Hat tip to Dynamics of Cats and Emily Lakdawalla, see also New Scientist.
Labels: Astronomy, COROT, exoplanet
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