The Rocky Planet known CoRoT – 7b is discovered outside our solar system, which is 1^st of its kind. It has quite similar features and composition like Earth. Announced Publicly on Wednesday (16 September 2009).

The planet was detected early last year, but it took months of observations to determine that it had a composition similar to Earth’s, the European Southern Observatory said in statement.

The planet was detected by the CoRoT satellite, a 30-centimeter space telescope launched by the European Space Agency in December 2006, specifically with the mission of detecting rocky planets outside our solar system.

The features of the Planet, which took many months to be demonstrated, are below:

• Temperature on ‘day face’ is above 3600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius).

• Temperature on ‘night face’ is minus-328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-200 degrees Celsius).

• One Side of the Planet is facing its star.
• Other side always faces away “facing the sun (star) is probably molten. The other side could actually have ice” if there is water on planet” – Hatzes.

• “We think that it has no atmosphere to redistribute the heat” – Hatzes (Attending the Pathways Towards Haitable Planets Conference).

• Density is quite similar to the Mercury, Venus and Earth.

• Relatively close to Earth – about 500 light years away.

• Mass about five times Earth’s mass.

• Circumference not quite twice as large as Earth’s circumference.

• The Planet whizzes around its star more than seven times faster than Earth moves and 23 times closer to its star than Mercury to our sun.

The most interesting fact is that, at least 42 scientists at 17 stations on three continents worked on the project.

They are publishing their findings in a special issue of the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal on October 22 as “The CoRoT-7 Planetary System: Two Orbiting Super-Earths.”

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