Discovery on the image of the most distant planet: A surprise 17,000 light-years from Earth
The exoplanet, 17,000 light-years away, was imaged by the Kepler Space Telescope, and its appearance surprised astronomers, since that planet is almost identical to the twin Jupiter from our solar system.
The planet named K2–2016-BLG-0005Lb is the first exoplanet discovered thanks to data from the Kepler telescope collected in 2016, and now analyzed by the gravitational microlens technique. It is similar in mass and size to Jupiter and orbits at almost identical distances from its star.
According to Kepler’s images, this most distant exoplanet is 1.1 masses of Jupiter and orbits its star at a distance of 4.4 astronomical units, while the distance of Jupiter from the Sun is 5.2 astronomical units. The star around which that exoplanet orbit is the size of 60 percent of our Sun.
Although they do not have much information about this distant star system, scientists are very intrigued by such findings.
Astronomers have long believed that Jupiter may have played a key role in the cosmic circumstances that made the Earth look the way it does. Thus, finding planets similar to Jupiter could indicate that there are Earth-like planets in another planetary system.
