Astronomers are going crazy on this discovery…

Space fans are pleased to hear about a new planetary discovery.  Apparently this exoplanet is just 39 light years in distance from us and is being called GJ 1132b.  Of course “just” is in relative terms.  In actuality that is pretty far but on a cosmic scale it is close 🙂  In addition it is close enough to study in much more extensive detail and they are saying it is extremely similar to Venus.

Just to clarify this is not the potential planet at the edge of our solar system that everyone is talking about which is cool too and we will have updates on it as they come in!!

(Note the pic is a rendition of a similar exoplanet)

Here is a bit more background on why this planet is particularly exciting.  It is rarer than one might imagine!

One of the dire frustrations of studying planets around other stars (and, really, any astronomical object) is their distance from Earth, which makes it onerous or impossible to get many basic details about them. Exoplanets are doubly frustrating because any light they emit (light that would give hints about what’s happening on the surface) is often overwhelmed by the light of the parent star.

But the new planet, called GJ 1132b, is only a cosmic stone’s throw from Earth, orbiting a fairly dim star, and appears to be a rocky world with an atmosphere. And while its surface temperature indicates that it may have more in common with Venus than Earth, it is so perfectly primed for Earth-based studying, that astrophysicist Drake Deming hailed it as “arguably the most important planet ever found outside the solar system.”

This sounds extremely promising.  I can’t wait until they get more pics of this thing possibly from the Hubble, ESO or a new telescope system that has yet to launch!

thanks to space.com for the great info

thanks to NASA for the great pic