Thursday, June 30, 2011

A New Addition to the Family of Exoplanets

As of June 14, 2011; CoRoT-18b is welcomed into the family of exoplanets. Although being a single star-system, the total number of exoplanets have risen: now to 534 total (448 stars; many exoplanets have siblings). CoRoT-18b, discovered by CoRoT, sits 2875.5 light-years away, and shines at magnitude 14.99 (dim). Below is a picture of the digitized sky survey, and an artist's illustration of it. Below that is its orbit, compared to Mercury's in our solar system. More information.

 
 

Suzanne Aigrain Oxford University’s department of Physics, lead UK scientist for CoRoT, said: “CoRoT-18b is special because its star might be quite young. Finding planets around young stars is particularly interesting because planets evolve very fast initially, before settling into a much steadier pattern of evolution”. [Planetary evolution is NOT the same as Darwinian evolution. Therefore, planetary evolution has NOTHING to do with the Big Bang Theory, which is rubbish.]

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