There is a star 'mu Arae' around which orbits a 'small' planet, about 14 times the mass of our own planet Earth. It's interesting how Astronomers refer to a world like that as being 'small'. It's a bit like a Mouse referring to a German Shepherd as being small. However, it's all relative:
"It's much closer to our solar system than anything we've found so far," said Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington.
"This really is an exciting discovery," said Boss, who was not involved in the work. "I'm still somewhat stunned they have such good data."
The discovery was made with a European Southern Observatory telescope at La Silla, Chile, working at the verge of what's possible to detect.
Most of the more than 120 planets found beyond our solar system are gaseous worlds as big or larger than Jupiter, mostly in tight orbits that would not permit a rocky planet to survive.
So as you can see, they were comparing it to other gaseous big planets.
- Art Neuro
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