Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Even more planets discovered via "wobble" method

An international group of astronomers using the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) have announced the discovery of 32 new planets, with many more announcements on the way. They had already announced the discovery of 43 other planets, bringing the total so far to 75. This is the result of a five year program of the European Southern Observatory that used a telescope in Chile.
Among the 75 planets discovered are 24 so-called super-Earths; planets with a mass just a few times that of Earth (not gas giants.) Only 28 super-Earths in total have been discovered by researchers around the world. This radial velocity method which looks for wobble is very good at finding these smaller planets.
The following link will show you an animation that demonstrates how the Radial Velocity Method works.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Planet_reflex_sm.gif



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