smallest extrasolar planet detected

Astronomers set the record for finding the smallest extrasolar planet to date on may 30th, 2008, orbiting around the star MOA-2007-BLG-192L. It is estimated that MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb only has about 3 times the mass then earth does. The planet is guessed to be about 3000 light years away from us, which will make it extremely hard to ever view even with our future telescopes like the giant Magellan telescope. The planet was discovered using the gravitational microlensing technique.

The star MOA-2007-BLG-192L guessed to have only about 6% of our suns mass, so we think it’s either a red dwarf star that sustains nuclear fusion or a brown dwarf, also known as a failed star. This discovery around MOA-2007-BLG-192L just makes us realize that it is very common for low mass stars to have low mass extrasolar planets around them. The extra-solar planet MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb is guessed to be about half the distance that our Earth is to our sun. Which in theory would make this a very cold planet maybe even as cold as Pluto considering that the star doesn’t give off 1/10th of the light our sun does.
So an extrasolar planet discovered 3,000 light years away orbiting a very small star doesn’t really hit the jack pot on discovering a habitable planet. It may, it may not but it shows us that smaller stars like MOA-2007-BLG-192L do have smaller extrasolar planets closer to the size of Earth. It the next ten years I think we will make a giant leap in finding extrasolar planets like MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, with technology upgrades and extrasolar planet missions and all that.

exoplanet, extrasolar planet