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Five planets found orbiting Tau Ceti, one of the closest Sun-like stars in our system

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Tau Ceti star

Astronomers have discovered five planets, including one in the habitable “Goldilocks Zone”, surrounding Tau Ceti, one of the closest and most Sun-like stars in our neighborhood (it has the same specteral classification as the Sun). Located just 12 light-years away from Earth, the planets are about 2-6 times the mass of Earth. The single planet located in the Goldilocks Zone, an area in the system that is just right for supporting liquid water, is about five times the mass of the Earth making it the smallest planet found to be orbiting in the habitable zone of any Sun-like star.

Tau Ceti starAccording to Daily Galaxy:

“The international team of astronomers from the United Kingdom, Chile, United States, and Australia, combined more than six-thousand observations from three different instruments and intensively modeled the data. Using new techniques, the team has found a method to detect signals half the size previously thought possible. This greatly improves the sensitivity of searches for small planets and suggests that Tau Ceti is not a lone star but has a planetary system.”

Tau Ceti is one of our nearest cosmic neighbors and so bright that astronomers may be able to study the atmospheres of these planets in the not-too-distant future making it one of our brightest prospects in the search for extraterrestrial life.

The researchers discovered this planetary system using data from three state-of-the-art spectrographs: HARPS on the 3.6-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile (4864 data points); UCLES on the Anglo-Australian Telescope in Siding Spring, Australia (978 data points); and HIRES on the 10-meter Keck telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii (567 data points).

Sources: University of California – Santa Cruz
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