Young Jupiter-like planet discovered 97 light years away.
A team of researchers - headed by Professor Bruce Macintosh of Stanford University in California - has discovered a young Jupiter-like planet within an equally young system.
Macintosh and an international team of 90 scientists used a new instrument called the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) to discover 51 Eridani B. This device can detect luminous, young planets that are only visible at infrared wavelengths. It was also meant for discovering planets that no one had ever seen or heard about before.
51 Eridani B is the first exoplanet to be discovered by the GPI. It is double the size of Jupiter and can be found 97 light-years from Earth, orbiting a star. It has a temperature of 430 degrees Celsius so it is colder which makes it a planet and not a star. It is also fainter than a star.
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According to Discovery.com, Macintosh makes it clear why this planet is considered similar to Jupiter. He says, "This is the first planet we've seen which has the kind of chemistry and atmospheric composition that Jupiter has in our solar system." He adds, "Its atmosphere is full of methane and its surface is not completely enshrouded in big thick clouds, so we've really reached the point where we're seeing a young 20-million-year-old equivalent of Jupiter which probably formed in a similar way."
"The exploration of very young planetary systems that will evolve to look like our own has just begun," says Didier Saumon, according to Science20.com. Saumon is a member of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, whose role was theoretical model-making and data analysis for the project. "The Gemini Planet Imager is an amazing new technology that has quickly discovered the first extrasolar analogue of Jupiter, but much younger."
The Gemini Planet Imager is based in Chile. It can be found on an top of an 8-meter Gemini South Telescope in the country.
