NASA revealed to have discovered 5 planets orbiting around a sun

Nov 07: National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA) in its recent findings has revealed that they have discovered a fifth planet orbiting a star outside our own solar system which suggests that there are many such solar system like ours with number of planets.

The new planet is 45 times bigger than the mass of Earth but is a similar distance away from its sun, a star known as 55 Cancri.

Debra Fisher, an astronomer at San Francisco State University said that though four planets had already been seen orbiting around the star but this discovery marks that for the first time as many as five planets have been found orbiting a solar system outside our own solar system.

The researchers said that life could possibly thrive on the surface of moon that might be orbiting the new planet but such a moon would be far too small to detect with the available methods.

Fischer said, “The star is very much like our own sun. It has about the same mass and is about the same age as our sun”.

“It's a system that appears to be packed with planets.” She added.

“It would be a little bit warmer than the Earth but not very much,” said Jonathan Lunine, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona.

“If there were a moon around this new planet, it would have a rocky surface, so water on it in principle could puddle into lakes and oceans," said Geoff Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley.

“This discovery of the first-ever quintuple planetary system has me jumping out of my socks’” Mercy looked elated.

“We now know that our sun and its family of planets are not unusual,” he added.

This planet was discovered after nearly two decades of observation using ground based telescopes with the Doppler Technique that measures a planet’s stellar wobble.

Astronomers say that this discovery has made them to draw an inference that there will be many stars supporting the bundles of planet around it.

With the improvement in the technology there is possibility that scientist will be able to find a planet like ours.