Discovered Planet Is Hot Metallic And Dense As Mercury
According to the team, an earth sized planet with similar characteristics found. the planet located 339 light years away. It found by the global team astronomer. which includes the University of Warwick. The planet Named K2-229b. K2-229b. is 20 percent larger than the earth.
mass which is over two-and-a-half times greater. and reaches a dayside temperature of over 2000°C (2330 Kelvin). As it looks very like its host star (0.012 AU, around a hundredth of the distance between Earth and the Sun). which is a medium size K dwarf in the Virgo Constellation. K2-229b orbits this star every fourteen hours.
Aix-Marseille located in France. Which led this. the University of Warwick’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Group. and Dr. David Armstrong detected. the planet in the first instance, alongside researchers at the Universidade, do Porto. They used the K2 telescope for this project. The team and Dr.
Armstrong used the spectroscopy technique . also known as the ‘wobble method’ to discover and characterize this faraway planet. As the team knew that the planet was there due to dips in the light from its host star as it orbited. Which is blocking starlight. The team has already calculated. the size, position, and mass of K2-229b by measuring the radial velocity of the star.
They found out how much the starlight ‘wobbles’ during orbit. Because of the gravitational tug from the planet. which changes depending on the planet’s size.
Dr. David Armstrong from the University of Warwick’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Group. said Mercury stands left from the other Solar System terrestrial planets. Which showing a very high fraction of iron and implying it formed in a different way. We shocked to see an exoplanet with the same high density as earth. Which is showing that Mercury-like planets are not as rare as we thought.
