In News
- An exoplanet dubbed Gliese 486b was recently discovered orbiting its star, Gliese 486.
About Gliese
- The newfound planet orbits the star once every 1.5 days at a distance of 2.5 million km.
- Designated Gliese 486b, it belongs to a class of exoplanets called super-Earths.
- It has a radius of 1.31 Earth radii, a mass 2.8 times that of our home planet, but has a similar density.
- Its composition is not its only distinguishing feature — its relative closeness to Earth .
- The newfound exoplanet, Gliese 486 b, circles a dim red dwarf star just 26 light-years from Earth and is about 1.3 times larger and 2.8 times more massive than our home planet, a new study reports.
- Gliese 486 b whips around its host star once every 1.47 Earth days, and it crosses that star’s face from our perspective. Gliese 486 b is therefore the third-closest such “transiting” alien world known — and the closest one that orbits a red dwarf with a measured mass. (The star Gliese 486 is about 30% as massive as our sun.)
Source: The Hindu
