Near Identical Twin of Jupiter Planet

April 8, 2022

Astronomers have recently discovered a planet that is a near-identical twin of Jupiter. The newly discovered twin of Jupiter is also located at a similar distance from its star as the distance between Jupiter and the Sun.

Overview:

The newly discovered planet has been dubbed K2-2016-BLG-0005Lb.
This exoplanet has been discovered by an international astrophysicist’s team using data obtained that was obtained by NASA’s Kepler space telescope.
The Kepler Space Telescope has detected around 2700 planets in the Milky Way galaxy.
The newly discovered planet is located 17,000 light-years away from Earth.

How was this planet spotted?

Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and a gravitational microlensing method was used by the scientists to spot this twin of Jupiter. The scientists spotted the planet after it temporarily magnified and bent the light from a background star.

Where has this study been published?

On ArXiv.org this study has been published and has been submitted to the peer-reviewed journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. This study has been led by Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics and David Specht, a Ph.D. student, from the University of Manchester.

Features of the newly discovered planet

This newly discovered identical twin of Jupiter has a mass similar to Jupiter, Also, its position from its respective Sun is similar to that of Jupiter as from the sun. this is the first time Einstein’s microlensing method has been used by the Kepler Telescope to discover a planet.

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