By Mark Young, SouthFloridaReporter.com Managing Editor, Aug 18, 2015 – It was 1942 when the first rocket was launched. It reached an altitude of 50 (fifty) miles. In the 73 years since, we’ve landed men on the moon and sent exploratory satellites to the far reaches of the galaxy. This year, 2015, we have made numerous discoveries about our neighboring planets. We’ve landed on Mars and seen closeups of the planet Pluto. Now we have discovered another planet, a lot like Jupiter.
By Miriam Kramer, Mashable, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Aug 18, 2015 – A new instrument on Earth designed to image planets far outside the solar system has discovered its first planet, and it’s the most Jupiter-like world ever found.
The planet, named 51 Eridani b, was discovered by the Gemini Planet Imager — an instrument mounted to the Gemini South telescope in Chile — and is located about 100 light-years from our solar system. The new planet find is detailed in this week’s issue of the journal Science Advances.
51 Eridani b is about two times the mass of Jupiter and its atmosphere is actually rich in methane, an element that appears in Jupiter’s atmosphere as well, but has a much smaller presence in the atmospheres of other previously discovered exoplanets.
An exoplanet is defined as a planet that is outside our solar system.
