Planets in Our Solar System
The Solar System is the gravitational bound system, consisting of the Sun and objects revolving around it. It consists of other objects that orbit it directly or indirectly. The ones that orbit the Sun directly are eight planets. The remaining are smaller ones, dwarf planets or smaller solar bodies.
The Solar System came into being due to the gravitational collapse of a huge interstellar molecular cloud. The largest amount of this mass is contained in the Sun and the remaining is in Jupiter.
Out of all these small and big objects, that orbit the Sun, Earth is the only planet that has life on it and has geographical activity. It is the only planet having a natural satellite, the moon.
New Discovery
Researches have been doing great efforts in trying to find out more about this greater outside world, that we are a part of. Many discoveries keep on coming up.
The latest being the one, in which scientists have discovered its first Earth- size planet, that seems to have favourable conditions for the existance of liquid water on its surface. The discovery has been made by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite ( TESS).
Scientists have confirmed the news and have named it as TOI 700.
The find has been made using a NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
This is one of the only few Earth – size planets discovered in star’s livable zone so far.
As one of the astrophysics division director of NASA in Washington, explains, TESS was designed mainly for this purpose of finding Earth- size planets orbiting near by stars.
This new found, TOI 700 is a small, cool M dwarf star located just over 100 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. It’s roughly 40% of the Sun’s mass and size and about half its surface temperature. The star appears in 11 of the 13 sectors TESS observed during the mission’s first year, and scientists caught multiple transits by its three planets.
The Spitzer data increased scientists’ confidence that TOI 700 d is a real planet and sharpened their measurements.