Extrasolar: Stars:
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| Summary: | The newly-discovered planet MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, which orbits the brown dwarf MOA-2007-BLG-192L. |
| Description: | This system is 3000 +-400 ly from our sun. MOA-2007-BLG-192L is estimated to be about six percent of our sun's mass, which is just below the mass needed to trigger and sustain nuclear fusion in its core, making it a brown dwarf. This also marks the lowest mass star yet found to hold a planet, with "MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb" coming in at approximately 20% of the star’s mass. It orbits at about the same distance as Venus from our sun, but the star is so dim (anywhere from 3,000 to a million times fainter than our sun) that from just solar heating alone the planet’s atmosphere would likely be colder than the surface of Pluto. Astrophysicists studying the MOA-2007-BLG-192L system have crunched the numbers and offered the optimistic suggestion that the planet not only holds a thick atmosphere, but that it has a surface covered by a deep ocean heated from inside by radioactive decay. This interior heating could give the planet a surface temperature as balmy (in the astronomical sense) as Earth. On the flip side of the coin, MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb could just be a giant rock and ice version of Mercury. This discovery is very exciting because it implies Earth-mass planets can form around low-mass stars, which are very common. So, I created a fictional earth-like planet, which is nearly covered by an ocean. The planet has a distance of 0.62 AU from the parent star. MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb was first mentioned in the "The Astrophysical Journal" in May 30 2008. NOTE: Please view Fugazi's read me file for instructions concerning the installation and usage of this add-on. |
| Addon Homepage: | |
| Creator: | Fugazi |
| Version: | 1.0 |
| License: | Free for non-commercial use. |
| Added: | 2008-07-09 15:40 |
| Last modified: | 2008-07-10 13:05 |
| Download: | |
| MOA-2007-BLG-192L | 5.43 MB |
Comments by visitors:
2011-11-01 14:11
#2 anonymous
looks like earth with low-lying areas floded
2011-10-29 16:49
#1 SpaceWhizKid 581
I relized (pardon my spelling i'm only 10) that the suface is a flooded version of earth, nice Idea!
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