International

Planet found

Washington June 14. For the first time, astronomers have found a distant planetary system with at least one planet whose orbit resembles a member of our solar system.

Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington said on Thursday they have found a planet about five times the size of Jupiter circling a sun-like star at an orbital distance very much like that of the solar system's biggest planet.

The newly discovered planet is one of three planets circling a star, called 55 Cancri, that is about 51 light years away from earth.

``This is the first time that we've found a family of planets that has some similarities to our own solar system,'' Mr. Marcy said at a news conference.

The new planet circles 55 Cancri at a distance of 5.5 astronomical units, close to the 5.2 AU orbit of Jupiter. An AU is the distance between the earth and the sun, about 148 million kms.

The two other planets around 55 Cancri are also Jupiter- or Saturn-sized bodies, but they orbit much closer to the parent star. One is in an orbit of about 14.4 million km and the other is about 36.8 million km.

Mr. Marcy and Mr. Butler also announced they had found 13 other planets orbiting distant stars, bringing to 91 the total number of known extra solar planets.

Just a decade ago, the concept of other stars having planets was ``in the realm of science fiction,'' noted Anne Kinney, director of NASA's astronomy division.

The Marcy-Butler team has found most of the 91 extra solar planets. The group uses a technique that measures the very slight wobble of a central star and then uses the magnitude of this motion to determine the presence of orbiting planets, the size and shape of their orbits and their mass. The technique works only for larger planets and cannot detect those much smaller than about half the mass of Saturn.

Mr. Marcy and Mr. Butler said they had a hint years ago that 55 Cancri had a large planet in a Jupiter-like orbit, but to confirm the conclusion required measurements for at least one complete orbit of the planet.

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