Finding a planet like a sub-saturn near a star like the Sun
A team of scientists and engineers under the leadership of Professor Abhijit Chakraborty, Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) of Ahmedabad, has a team near the Sun like a planet called a sub-saturn or super Neptune-shaped planet (27 times the Earth's mass and the radius of the Earth 6 times) is discovered. This planet has been named EPIC 211945201 B or K2-236B.
This research article has been published online in the American Astronomical Society's magazine and published by IOP Publishing.
This planet was discovered on the basis of measuring the mass of the planet. Measurement work was done by PRL Advance Radial-Velocity Abu-Sky Search (PARAS) Spectrograph made from indigenous technology.
This spectrograph is integrated with the 1.2 M telescope of Gurushikhar Observatory located at Mount Abu, India. So far only 23 such planetary systems have been discovered, whose mass is 10 to 70 times the mass of the Earth and whose radius is 4 to 8 times the radius of the Earth. This discovery is very important to understand the construction process of planets like Sub-Saturn or Super Neptune.
With this discovery, India has joined the few selected countries, who have succeeded in discovering planets outside our solar system. Besides this, Paras (PARAS) is the only spectrograph of its kind throughout Asia, which can measure the mass of the planet moving around the sun. There are only few spectrographs around the world that can measure the masses with such accuracy.
