New Earth-sized planet found

Astronomers have found a planet only an astronomical stone's throw away, at four light years, raising the chances that there is a habitable planet orbiting in Earth's neighbourhood.

Researchers say the newly discovered planet is too close to its sun to support known forms of life - it has a surface temperature estimated at 1200C. But previous studies suggest that when one planet is discovered orbiting a sun there are usually others in the same system.

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The Earth-sized planet, the discovery of which was announced by Stephane Udry and Xavier Dumusque, of the Geneva Observatory, orbits one of the suns in the three-star Centauri system, roughly 40 trillion kilometres away.

Read more: Times Live

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Kepler-21b: Near Earth-Sized Planet Discovered 352 Light-Years Away

Huffington Post 30 Nov

The National Optical Astronomy Observatory announced on Wednesday the discovery of Kepler-21b, a new planet that's close to the size of earth and is only about 352 light years away.

"By astronomical standards, that's right next door," Katy Garmany, the Deputy Press Officer at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, told HuffPost.

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Watch an interesting combination Early Saturday Morning: Two Planets and a Star

Full Story: Yahoo News 19 Nov

If you’re up after midnight early on Saturday morning (Nov. 19), you should be able to see a celestial gathering of a bright star, a bright planet and a rather wide waning crescent moon. Look out towards the east-northeast sky at around 1 a.m. local time, to find a triangle in the sky composed of the three cosmic bodies.

These three cosmic bodies are: 

The star is Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation of Leo, the Lion. The planet in the triangle is Mars, which comes up over the east-northeast horizon shortly before midnight. The moon, as noted, is now a crescent phase, having just passed its last quarter phase earlier this week.  

Once the trio climbs high into the eastern sky in the predawn hours on Saturday, you’ll see that they’ll seem to resemble an isosceles triangle, which has at least two equal sides.

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