Planet 600 Light Years Away From Earth Discovered by Indian Scientists

The scientists have named the host star as EPIC 211945201 or K2-236. Now, India has joined the group of countries that have discovered planets around stars. Now, India has joined the group of countries that have discovered planets around stars.

Chennai, June 8: A sub-Saturn or super-Neptune sized planet which has 27 times more mass and whose radius is six times more than that of the planet Earth has been discovered by a group of researchers from the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad. The newfound planet revolves around a Sun-like star which is some 600 light years away from Earth, reported The Times of India.

Indigenously designed ‘PRL Advance Radial-velocity Abu-Sky Search’ (PARAS) spectrograph integrated with a 1.2m telescope, was used to measure the mass of the planet, which facilitated the discovery of the planet. Now, India has joined the group of countries that have discovered planets around stars. Scientists have named the host star as EPIC 211945201 or K2-236. However, the planet will also be called as EPIC 211945201b or K2-236b. The surface temperature of the planet was recorded around 600 degree Celsius due to its close proximity to the host star. The planet is most likely uninhabitable.

Scientists have claimed that the discovery will help in the understanding of the formation mechanism of super-Neptune or sub-Saturn kind of planets that are too close to the host star. The report said it was Nasa’s K2 (Kepler2) photometry that found that the source was a planetary candidate as it was transiting, where the planet body comes between the star and the Earth. PRL scientists, who observed the target for about 1.5 years with the spectrograph, made calculations which suggested that heavy elements like ice, silicates and iron content make 60%-70% of the total mass. Only 23 such systems are known with such precise measurement of mass and radii, said the report.