Researchers of Spain observed a new exoplanet through a 2.5 meter Nordic Optical Telescope. This is the first time in the history of astronomy that scientist noticed a super-Earth orbiting in front of the host star from the Earth.
The exo-planet, which is almost double the size of the Earth was discovered from Texas in 2004. It travels around a star known as 55 Cancri. It is. It is located around 40 light years away from sun.
Earlier, it was pretty difficult task for scientists to measure these minuscule changes from the ground. The dense atmosphere of Earth is the major cause behind it.
Ray Jayawardhana, the co-author of the study expressed that it is certainly incredible that astronomers can perform several tasks by merely pushing the limits of current telescopes.
Ernst de Mooij, the main author of the study stated that the novel observations demonstrates that researchers can identify the transit of small planets around the sun with the help of ground based telescope. It is really significant for space missions like TESS and PLATO. These mission would determine the location of small planets and bright stars.
PLATO is the future mission of European Space Agency which is planned to launch in 2024. However, TESS is a two year survey mission of the NASA. The primary goal of both missions is to uncover thousands of exo-planets that travel around the stars in the sky.
