Closest Exoplanet to Earth Imaged -- Orbiting a Red Dwarf Star Only 35 Light Years Distant dailygalaxy.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailygalaxy.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets planets beyond our solar system but few have been directly imaged, because they are extremely difficult to see with existing telescopes. A University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (
IfA) graduate student has beaten the odds and discovered a directly imaged exoplanet, and it’s the closest one to Earth ever found, at a distance of only 35 light years.
Using the COol Companions ON Ultrawide orbiTS (COCONUTS) survey,
IfA graduate student
Michael Liu and
Zach Claytor (
IfA), William Best (University of Texas at Austin), Trent Dupuy (University of Edinburgh) and Robert Siverd (Gemini Observatory/National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory) identified a planet about six times the mass of Jupiter. The team’s research, published in