Neptune-Sized Planet 20.5 Light Years Away
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
French and Swiss astronomers working at the La Silla observatory in Chile discovered a planet about the size of Neptune 20.5 light years from our solar system, the European Southern Observatory said Wednesday.
The still-unnamed planet is circling a red dwarf star called G1 581 in the Libra constellation, and has about 17 times the mass of the Earth. It takes five days to complete its orbit around a star that has about one-third the mass of the sun, the observatory said. The planet is smaller than all but five of the 170 planets known to be circling other stars.
