![]() ![]() “ we had planets on both sides of the habitable zone – one too hot and one too cold – and now we have one in the middle that’s just right,” says Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. As well as now boasting the most confirmed exoplanets of any system discovered to date (a system identified last month, HD 10180, had five confirmed planets with two more potential candidates) the three Earth mass planet, Gliese 581g, orbits in the crucial Goldilocks Zone of the star. ![]() The new survey has turned up two more planets – one seven Earth mass planet orbiting in 433 days, and one 3.1 Earth mass planet orbiting in 36.6 days. ![]() The red dwarf star Gliese 581, which lies 20 light years away in the constellation Libra, was already known to host four exoplanets, orbiting with periods ranging from 3 to 67 days. The other three planets are visible along a diagonal from the upper left to GJ 581g. The large planet in the foreground is the newly discovered GJ 581g, which has a 37-day orbit right in the middle of the star's habitable zone and is only three to four times the mass of Earth, with a diameter 1.2 to 1.4 times that of Earth. This artist's conception shows the inner four planets of the Gliese 581 system and their host red dwarf star. One of two new planets discovered in the Gliese 581 system is three Earth masses and lies square in the middle of the star's habitable zone, boosting its chances of hosting conditions suitable for life.įor our own Solar System, Earth lies in the Sun's habitable zone, where liquid water is stable and conditions are not too hot and not too cold for life to flourish, hence the "Goldilocks zone" moniker. ![]()
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