India scientists in Ahmedabad discovers Neptune like planet: Watch here

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Representational Image
Representational Image

Ahmedabad : It is time to feel proud as India finds a position in a select group of countries which have discovered planets, stars, heavenly objects and so on. Indian scientists have found a sub-Saturn or super-Neptune-sized planet having a radius that is six times that of earth, Isro announced on Friday.

The exceptional discovery was made by a team led by Abhijit Chakraborty of the Ahmedabad Physical Research Laboratory. The newly discovered planet was found around a Sun-like star, according to Isro. It goes around the star in about 19.5 days.

The team has discovered the planet by measuring the mass of the planet using the indigenously designed ‘PRL Advance Radial-velocity Abu-sky Search’ (PARAS) spectrograph, integrated with a 1.2m telescope at PRL’s Gurushikhar Observatory in Mount Abu. It is first of its kind spectrograph in the country, which can measure the mass of a planet revolving around a star. Isro said very few such spectrographs exist around the world that allows such precise measurements.

Speaking to reporters, Chakraborty said the new planet, which is 600 light years away from Earth, is between the size of Saturn and Neptune. “It is closer to Neptune,” he said, pointing out that the new planet had 27 times the mass of Earth and six times its radius.

The surface temperature of the new planet is around 600°C as it is very close to the host star. This might make it uninhabitable, but such a discovery is of importance for understanding the formation mechanism of such super-Neptune or sub-Saturn kind of planets that are too close to the host star.