Planets! Planets! and more Planets!

Mon, 22 Jul 2002 22:20:18 +0000

Astronomers working at Berkeley and Geneva have found nine new planets circling nearby stars. With this discovery, we now know of 50 extra-solar planets, also called exoplanets. That is a big increase from 41 planets last known five years ago.

All these individual planets move in an orbit around a star, which is called their parent star. The astronomers estimate that the Beta Pictoris star has a planet ten times the mass of Earth. It orbits at a distance of about 10.5 billion kilometers, more than ten times the distance of the earth from the sun. And Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky appears to have a planet twice the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. This planet is 8 billion kilometers from its parent star. In comparison, our solar system seems almost tiny. The distance between Pluto, the farthest planet in our solar system and the sun is “just” 5.9 billion kilometers!

Planets on Pitara Kids Network

Planets! Planets! and more Planets!