New Planet 2017: Super Jupiter, Four-Planet System Uncovered

By Janna Dela Cruz, Christian Post Contributor Thursday, April 20, 2017

A new planet has recently been discovered by astronomers over at the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics and it will make Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system, look like a chess piece.

The newly discovered gas giant, which is being referred to as MOA-2016-BLG-227Lb, is three times the size of Jupiter, earning the nickname "super Jupiter."

The new planet is orbiting around a red dwarf star, which, despite the super Jupiter's massive size, is actually smaller than the Sun in the solar system.

The red dwarf star is much cooler than the Sun because of its smaller mass and less fuel residing in its core. Such type of stars is typically much younger than yellow stars like the one the Earth is orbiting around.

When orbiting the dwarf star, the super Jupiter covers around the same distance the planet Mars does when it goes the furthest away from the sun during its own orbit.

"Our analysis excludes the possibility that the host star is a G-dwarf, leading us to a robust conclusion that the planet MOA-2016-BLG-227Lb is a super-Jupiter mass planet orbiting an M or K-dwarf star likely located in the Galactic bulge," the researchers stated in their paper about the new planet.

Apart from the super Jupiter, there are 80 to 100 planets that were also discovered early this month with the help of citizen scientists.

Dr. Ian Crossfield of the University of California Santa Cruz invited individuals to lend him a hand in the classification of 1.5 million points of interest for the Exoplanet Explorers program. Over 7,000 people turned up to help him get the job done.

"Although the four-planet system is the most exciting, we found about 80 to 100 additional planets in the few days," Dr. Crossfeild said on ABC Breakfast.

The four planets in the freshly uncovered solar system, as per Dr. Crossfield, are much smaller than the ones in that of Earth's very own. Some of them have a year that only last just three-and-a-half Earth days.