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The cosmos never ceases to amaze us with its sheer size and splendor. Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there’s a firm place to stand — if only it weren’t so broiling hot.

“We basically live on a rock ourselves,” said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, director of the Thuringer observatory in Germany. “It’s as close to something like the Earth that we’ve found so far. It’s just a little too close to its sun.” It’s hot, they’re calling it the lava planet,” Hatzes said.

The planet is called Corot-7b. It was first discovered earlier this year. European scientists then watched it dozens of times to measure its density to prove that it is rocky like Earth. It’s in our general neighborhood, circling a star in the winter sky about 500 light-years away. Each light-year is about 6 trillion miles.

Planet info after the break….

The Following Info has been extracted from: Exoplanet

THE STAR

Name CoRoT-7
Distance 150 (± 20) pc ref.
Spectral Type K0V
Apparent Magnitude V 11.7
Mass 0.93 (± 0.03) Msun ref.
Age 1.5 (−0.3+0.8) Gyr ref.
Effective Temperature 5275 (± 75) K ref.
Radius 0.87 (± 0.04) Rsun ref.
Metallicity [Fe/H] 0.03 (± 0.06) ref.
Right Asc. Coord. 06 43 49
Decl. Coord. -01 03 46

2 PLANETS

Name CoRoT-7 b CoRoT-7 c
Discovered in 2009 -
Mass 0.0151 (± 0.0025) MJ ref. 0.0264 (± 0.0028) MJ ref.
Semi major axis 0.0172 (± 0.00029) AU ref. 0.046 AU ref.
Orbital period 0.853585 (± 2.4e-05) days ref. 3.698 (± 0.003) days ref.
Eccentricity 0 ref. 0 ref.
Radius 0.15 (± 0.008) RJ ref. -
Ttransit 2454398.0767 (± 0.0015) ref. -
Inclination 80.1 (± 0.3) deg. ref. -
Update 16/09/09 16/09/09


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