NASA’s Kepler space telescope spots Venus-like planet

New Delhi : NASA’s Kepler space telescope has spotted a Venus-like planet orbiting a dim star that is one-fifth in size of our sun.

Astronomers have located the new planet at 219 light years away from Earth.

In terms of size, the newly found planet is only slightly larger than Earth, and it tightly embraces its low-temperature star called Kepler-1649, encircling it every nine days.

The tight orbit causes the flux of sunlight reaching the planet to be 2.3 times as great as the solar flux on Earth. For comparison, the solar flux on Venus is 1.9 times the terrestrial value.

The discovery will provide insight into the nature of planets around M dwarf stars, by far the most common type in the universe.