Today, a team of scientists has reported the discovery of the lowest mass planet yet. The planet, called OGLE-2005-BGL-390Lb, is about 5 times the mass of the Earth, orbiting a star about 25,000 light years away.
Today another planet discovery has been announced.
This time, as stated above, we’re dealing with a planet definitely smaller than the other ones discovered in the past, leading us closer and closer to the moment when our telescopes will find an Earth-like planet somewhere up there.
OGLE-2005-BGL-390Lb is somewhere near the center of the Milky Way, very far away from us, and it’s orbiting around a star very different from our Sun (it’s just 1/5 of the Sun in mass) and it’s probably to far away from its (weak) star to be something less than a ball of ice or even not solid at all (it may be a Jupiter-like body), but finding out that the resolution of our instruments makes us able to see such a small and far object is encouraging on the way to find a planet just like our.
Take a look here for more detailed informations on the discovery announcement and for a quick (and exhaustive) explanation about the technique usually used to search for extraterrestrial planets.
