India discovers a new planet 600 light years away

Scientists at the Physical Research Laboratory of ISRO in Ahmedabad have now discovered a or super-Neptune size exoplanet which is about 27 the mass of Earth and about six times its radius.

As per ISRO, the planet, known as EPIC 211945201b or K2-236b, is 600 lightyears away from the Earth and revolves around a sun-like star in about 19.5 days.

The scientific team, led by Prof Abhijit Chakraborty made the discovery. Initially, NASA’s K2 (Kepler), a space observatory that continually monitors the brightness of the stars, picked up an anomaly in one of its photometry readings.

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It goes around the star and therefore blocks a tiny amount of star-light. By measuring the amount of light blocked by the planet body, the diameter or size of the planet can be measured. It was found to be 6 Earth radii. However, that data was not sufficient to confirm the planetary nature of the system.

The team then made the discovery by measuring the mass of the planet using the indigenously designed “PRL Advance Radial-velocity Abu-sky Search” (PARAS) spectrograph integrated with 1.2m Telescope at PRL’s Gurushikhar Observatory in Mount Abu, India.

The surface temperature of the planet is around 600°C. This might make it unhabitable, but such a discovery is of importance for understanding the formation mechanism of such super-Neptune or sub-Saturn kind of planets, that are too close to the host star.

The PRL scientists observed the target over a time-baseline of 420 days (in about 1.5 years) using the PARAS spectrograph for probing the nature of the system. Based on the mass and radius, model-dependent calculations suggest that the heavy elements, like ice, silicates, and iron content is 60-70 % of the total mass

With this discovery, India has joined a select league of countries which has discovered planets around stars.