ALBUFEIRA

Potentially Habitable Super-Earth Discovered 16 Light-Years Away

(Jun 29, 2014 by Sci-News.com)

Artistic representation of the potentially habitable exoplanet Gliese 832 c as compared with Earth

(PHL / UPR Arecibo)

A team of astronomers led by Dr Robert Wittenmyer of the University of New South Wales has discovered a super-Earth orbiting near the inner edge of the habitable zone of Gliese 832 (GJ 832), a red-dwarf star previously known to host a cold Jupiter-like exoplanet.

Gliese 832, also known as HD 204961 or LHS 3685, is a M1.5 dwarf located in the constellation Grus, about 16 light-years from Earth. It has about half the mass and radius of the Sun.

This star is already known to harbor Gliese 832b, a cold Jupiter-like planet discovered in 2009.

“With an outer giant planet and an interior potentially rocky planet, this planetary system can be thought of as a miniature version of our Solar System,” said Prof Chris Tinney, an astronomer with the University of New South Wales and a co-author of the discovery paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (arXiv.org pre-print).

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(from: sci-news.com)