BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Planet hunters find 'super-Earth'

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src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" /> <div class="mvb"><img height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" width="629" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/dot_629.gif" /></div> <div class="mvtb"><table cellspacing="0" width="416" border="0" cellpadding="0"><tr> <td width="213"><a onClick="popUpPage('http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/email/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4801842.stm','status=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,width=370,height=445','Mailer')" href="http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/email/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4801842.stm" class="epl" target="Mailer"> <img height="11" hspace="3" align="left" vspace="0" border="0" width="17" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/email.gif" /> E-mail this to a friend </a></td> <td width="203"><a onClick="popUpPage('http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4801842.stm','status=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,menubar=yes,width=600,height=445','Printer')" href="http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4801842.stm" class="epl" target="Printer"> <img height="11" hspace="3" align="left" vspace="0" border="0" width="17" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/print.gif" /> Printable version </a></td> </tr></table></div> </td> </tr> </table> <table width="629" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td colspan="3"> <div class="mxb"> <div class="sh"> Planet hunters find 'super-Earth' </div> </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" width="416"> <font size="2">   <div class="mvb"> <table border="0" width="416" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td valign="bottom"> <div class="mvb"> <span class="byl"> By Helen Briggs </span> <br /> <span class="byd"> BBC News science reporter </span> </div> </td> </tr> </table><img height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" width="416" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/999999.gif" /><br /> </div>  <P>  <table cellspacing="0" align="right" border="0" width="203" cellpadding="0"> <tr><td> <div> <img height="300" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" width="203" alt="Artist's impression of the icy "super-Earth" (Image: ESO)" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41434000/jpg/_41434414_icyplanet300eso.jpg" /> <div class="cap">New detection techniques help astronomers search for new planets</div> </div> </td></tr> </table>   <B>Planet hunters have discovered an icy "super-Earth" circling a distant star.</B> <P> International astronomers suspect it is a bare, icy, rocky world, much colder than the Earth and 13 times its mass. <P> The planet was spotted last April but details have only just been revealed in a paper submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters. <P> The extra-solar planet is one of a mere handful detected using a novel technique called microlensing. <P>  The planet orbits a star about half as big as our Sun, positioned some 9,000 light-years away. At -201C, it is one of the coldest extra-solar planets to be discovered. <P> Andrew Gould, professor of astronomy at Ohio State University, US, was one of the first people to discover it. <P> He said the find has two main implications. <P> "First, this icy 'super-Earth' dominates the region around its star that in our Solar System is populated by the gas-giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn," he said. <P> "We've never seen a system like this before because we've never had the means to find them. <P> "And second, these icy 'super-Earths' are pretty common. Roughly, 35% of all stars have them." <P> <B>Brightening effect</b> <P> Professor Gould is leader of the Microlensing Follow-up Network (MicroFUN) collaboration. <P> It is one of several international groups looking for Earth-like planets in planetary systems other than our own using the phenomenon called gravitational microlensing. <P>  <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="208" align="right" border="0"> <tr> <td width="5"><img height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" width="5" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" /></td> <td class="sibtbg"> <div> <div class="mva"> <img height="13" border="0" width="24" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/start_quote_rb.gif" /> <b>I was very excited and frantic to get someone to observe that star</b> <img height="13" align="right" vspace="0" border="0" width="23" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/end_quote_rb.gif" /><br clear="all"/> </div> </div> <div class="mva"> <div>Professor Andrew Gould</div> </div> </td> </tr> </table>  <P> The technique is an indirect way of obtaining information about large celestial objects that are too dim to see. <P> When a massive object such as a star crosses the path of a background star, it acts like a powerful lens, gravitationally bending and magnifying the light rays from the more distant star. <P> The object's gravity amplifies the starlight, causing it to brighten as the body passes in front of the star. <P> This can be observed by telescopes on Earth as a brightening and fading effect, as the lens star floats across the face of the background star. <P> <B>Neptune-mass</b> <P> Clues to the presence of the planet were first seen last April by a Polish astronomy project led by Professor Andrzej Udalski from Warsaw University. <P> When Gould and Udalski realised the star was brightening extremely quickly one night, they alerted the duty astronomer at the MDM Observatory in Arizona. <P> "It was four in the morning," Gould recalled, "I was very excited and frantic to get someone to observe that star." <P> Astronomers in Arizona took more than 1,000 measurements of the event, which, coupled with software models, confirmed the presence of a Neptune-mass planet, 13 times heavier than Earth. <P> Gould suspects the planet is a bare, icy Earth-like one, a sort of cold "super-Earth", although he cannot be certain. <P> "We can't really tell for sure," he said. "If we start getting more statistics on this type of planet, we could piece together a better story." <P> <B>Extraterrestrial life</b> <P> Since the 1990s, astronomers have discovered some 170 extra-solar, or exoplanets, a planet which orbits a star other than the Sun. <P> There is great interest in finding extrasolar planets that are like the Earth, since these could, in theory, have the right conditions for supporting life. <P> In January, a new planet 5.5 times the mass of the Earth - the smallest yet - became the third exoplanet to be detected by the microlensing technique. <P> Tim Naylor, professor of astrophysics at Exeter University, UK, said microlensing had great promise for the future. <P> "It holds out the promise that we will discover many Earth-sized planets with this technique," he told the BBC News website. <P> </font> <br /><br clear="all" /> <div class="mvtb"><table cellspacing="0" width="416" border="0" cellpadding="0"><tr> <td width="213"><a 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src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/print.gif" /> Printable version </a></td> </tr></table></div> <div class="mvtb"> </div><br /> </td> <td width="10" valign="top"><img height="1" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" width="10" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" /></td> <td width="203" valign="top"> <div class="sah"> SEE ALSO: </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/2/hi/science/nature/4647142.stm"> Smallest Earth-like planet found </a> <br /> <span class="sad"> 25 Jan 06 |  Science/Nature </span> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/2/hi/science/nature/4574233.stm"> Lens method finds far-off world </a> <br /> <span class="sad"> 24 May 05 |  Science/Nature </span> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/2/hi/science/nature/4264603.stm"> Smallest extra-solar planet found </a> <br /> <span class="sad"> 14 Feb 05 |  Science/Nature </span> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/2/hi/science/nature/4408187.stm"> Telescopes see 'distant planet' </a> <br /> <span class="sad"> 04 Apr 05 |  Science/Nature </span> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/2/hi/science/nature/3615940.stm"> Small planets seen by astronomers </a> <br /> <span class="sad"> 31 Aug 04 |  Science/Nature </span> </div> <img height="2" hspace="0" vspace="3" border="0" width="203" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/line_seealso.gif" /><br /> <img height="10" width="1" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" /><br /> <div class="nlp"> RELATED INTERNET LINKS: </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="http://www.osu.edu/"> Ohio State University </a> </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~microfun/"> MicroFun </a> </div> <div class="di"> The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites </div> <img height="10" width="1" alt="" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" /><br /> <div class="topStoryH"> <a class="lp" href="/2/hi/science/nature/default.stm">TOP SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT STORIES</a> </div> <div class="arr"> 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