Star System has 3 Planets in Habitable Zone Only 22 light years away, Gliese 667C has three new plan
Star System has 3 Planets in Habitable Zone Only 22 light years away, Gliese 667C has three new planets in the habitable zone on top of the three previously discovered outside of it! Gliese 667C is a very low luminosity M-dwarf type star with about a third the mass of our Sun. The habitable zone is a zone where liquid water could exist on the surface of a rocky body. These three new planets have a mass ranging from 2.7-3.8x that of Earth. These Super-Earth’s have orbital periods of 28, 39, and 62 days which means they all orbit within Mercury’s orbit of our Sun. Water can exist so close because of the low luminosity of the parent star. In order for liquid water to exist there would have to be an atmosphere on all of the planets, but because these planets are over 200 trillion km away, there is no method we have yet to determine if the planet does in fact have one. Astronomers believe however that M-dwarf types are good candidates in the search for habitable worlds, and this system conclusively proves that even very small stars can host a large number of planets. There may very well be more planets in the universe than there are stars, which makes extrasolar missions much more easily funded. Hope you enjoyed! Anything you want to see? -- source link
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