Astronomers Discover 10 New Planets

Astronomers have found what appear to be 10 more previously unknown planets orbiting stars beyond the sun, including one so tantalizingly close that it could become the first such world that astronomers can study directly.

The latest discoveries, to be discussed Monday at a scientific meeting in England, bring the total of confirmed planets around sun-like stars to about 50, and not one of those systems resembles our own solar system.

This unexpected trend is continuing as the international search for planets progresses to a new level of difficulty, now turning up smaller objects, those in orbits that make them harder to find and multiplanet systems.

The new batch includes the possible signature of a planet with about the mass of Jupiter orbiting a star called Epsilon Eridani, a mere 10.5 light-years (61 trillion miles) from Earth and visible to the naked eye in the constellation Eridani (“the river”). It is the closest star yet found to have a planetary companion, according to William D. Cochran of the University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory.

Cochran will describe the team’s discovery Monday at the 24th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Manchester, a gathering of 2,000 astronomers from 87 countries. Two other teams led by astronomers from the United States and Europe will report the detection of nine additional planets along with new details on the trends emerging in the accumulating data.