Astronomers have discovered a new Venuslike rocky exoplanet 39 light years away , which may be cool enough to potentially host an atmosphere. If it does, it is close enough that we could study that
atmosphere in detail with
the Hubble Space Telescope and future observatories like the Giant
Magellan Telescope, researchers said. “Our ultimate goal is to find a
twin Earth, but along the way we've found a twin Venus,“ said
astronomer David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in US.
“We suspect it will have a Venus-like atmosphere too, and if it does we can't wait to get a whiff,“ he said.
The planet-GJ 1132b orbits a red dwarf star only one-fifth the size of our Sun. The star is also cooler than the Sun, emitting just 1200th as much light. GJ 1132b circles its star every 1.6 days at a distance of 1.4 million miles. As a result, it is baked to a temperature of about 232 degrees Celsius.Such temperatures would boil off any water the planet may have once held.
Source :- The Times of India, 17- Nov- 2015
“We suspect it will have a Venus-like atmosphere too, and if it does we can't wait to get a whiff,“ he said.
The planet-GJ 1132b orbits a red dwarf star only one-fifth the size of our Sun. The star is also cooler than the Sun, emitting just 1200th as much light. GJ 1132b circles its star every 1.6 days at a distance of 1.4 million miles. As a result, it is baked to a temperature of about 232 degrees Celsius.Such temperatures would boil off any water the planet may have once held.
Source :- The Times of India, 17- Nov- 2015
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