Aug 15 2001
From The Space Library
Astronomers led by Debra A. Fischer of the University of California at Berkeley announced the discovery of a planetary system similar to Earth’s solar system, located in the Big Dipper. The team of astronomers had found a planet about the size of Jupiter, orbiting the star 47 Ursae Majoris. Scientists had already known about one planet orbiting 47 Ursae Majoris, but the second planet’s discovery provided the first example of two planets orbiting in near-perfect circles around a single star outside of Earth’s solar system. Astronomers had previously discovered other planets orbiting stars outside of Earth’s solar system, but those planets either were orbiting perilously close to the host star or had eccentric orbits. The astronomers had used University of California’s Lick Observatory near Santa Cruz, California, to find the planets, which they had detected by observing the planets’ gravitational effects upon the star 47 Ursae Majoris. (John Noble Wilford, “Planet System with Earth-Like Orbits Is Found,” New York Times, 16 August 2001; Debra A. Fischer et al., “A Second Planet Orbiting 47 Ursae Majoris,” Astrophysical Journal 564, no. 2 (10 January 2002): 1028–1034.)
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