Astronomers have discovered a planet 100 light years away that looks like Jupiter must have looked like millions of years ago, which may provide new information about the formation of planets, researchers said on Thursday.
Dubbed 51 Eridani b, is the first exoplanet detected by a new instrument to attract young planets orbiting bright stars called Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), installed on the Gemini South telescope in Chile, the journal Science reported.
This is the “first young planet that probably looks like Jupiter billions of years ago, making this finding in the most important piece of the puzzle of planet formation,” Travis Barman, an associate professor said planetary sciences at the University of Arizona.
The star it orbits, 51 Eridani, has only 20 million years, much younger than the Sun, which has 4,500 million years.
The planet has twice the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and contains the highest amount ever detected methane in the atmosphere of a planet.
Its temperature is estimated at 427 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt lead.
“This is exactly the kind of planet we longed to discover when we designed the GPI” said James Graham, GPI project scientist and professor of astronomy at the University California.
“We wanted to find young planets to understand their formation process,” he said.
The GPI began operating in the Gemini South telescope in Chile in 2014.
A separate NASA mission known as the Kepler space telescope seeks Earth-like planets that could harbor life.
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