Award-winning CubeSat is the first to detect an exoplanet



41 light years away from the constellation Cancer, 55 Cancri is 7.8 times the mass of the earth and revolves around its sun-like star once in the 17.7 hours, which means it is so close to the parent the surface temperature a sultry 2.709 K (2.436 ° C; 4.417 ° F) – hot enough to easily melt iron. To detect the planet, ASTERIA had to be able to measure a dip in the star's brightness of 0.04 percent.


Source link

Leave a Reply