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Swiss Team Discovers Third Extrasolar Planet
By Jeff Kanipe
Special to space.com
posted: 02:35 pm ET
09 September 1999
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Racking them Up: Swiss Team Discovers Their Third Extrasolar PlanetA Swiss team of astronomers has discovered its third extrasolar planet in less than a year. Using the 1.2-meter Euler Swiss telescope at the La Silla Observatory in La Serena, Chile, they have found a Jupiter-size planet orbiting in a near circle around the 8-th magnitude star HD 130322 in the constellation Virgo. Lying at a distance of only 7.4 million miles from its parent star (Mercury orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 36 million miles) the planet completes an orbit in only 10.7 days. Astronomers classify the new planet as a "hot Jupiter" type with a surface temperature of about 1,000 kelvins (1340 degrees fahrenheit). The star, which lies below naked-eye limit, is similar to the Sun in composition but is only about half as bright. It lies some 100 light-years away and, aside from its planetary companion, is otherwise unremarkable. The two planets previously discovered by the team are Gliese 86 (a massive planet in a double star system) and HD 75289, (the lightest known extrasolar planet with a mass 0.42 times that of Jupiter). The stars lie in the southern sky in the constellations Eridanus the River and Vela the Sails, respectively. The search effort is part of the Geneva Observatory's Extrasolar Planet Search Program. The team members for the most recent extrasolar planet discovery are Stephen Udry, Michael Mayor, Dominique Naef, F. Pepe, Didier Queloz, Nuno Santos, and Michael Burnet.
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