A trio of super-Earths

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Artists impression of the trio of super-Earths discovered by an European team using the HARPS spectrograph on ESOs 3.6 m telescope at La Silla Chile after five years of monitoring. The three planets having 4.2 6.7 and 9.4 times the mass of the Earth ...
Artist's impression of the trio of super-Earths discovered by an European team using the HARPS spectrograph on ESO's 3.6 m telescope at La Silla, Chile, after five years of monitoring. The three planets, having 4.2, 6.7, and 9.4 times the mass of the Earth, orbit the star HD 40307 with periods of 4.3, 9.6, and 20.4 days, respectively. Credit: ESO

Today, at an international conference, a team of European astronomers announced a remarkable breakthrough in the field of extra-solar planets. Using the HARPS instrument at the ESO La Silla Observatory, they have found a triple system of super-Earths around the star HD 40307. Looking at their entire sample studied with HARPS, the astronomers count a total of 45 candidate planets with a mass below 30 Earth masses and an orbital period shorter than 50 days. This implies that one solar-like star out of three harbours such planets.


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