Planetary System
On December 11, 2000, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of a planet Epsilon Reticuli b. With a minimum mass of 1.17 that of Jupiter and a similar radius, the planet moves around Epsilon Reticuli with an average separation of 1.16 AUs. The eccentricity of the planet is extremely low (at 0.06), and it completes an orbit every 418 days (or 1.13 years).
Stability analysis shows that the planet's Lagrangian points would be stable enough to host Earth-sized planets, though as yet no trojan planets have been detected in this system.
| Companion |
Mass | Semimajor axis |
Orbital period |
Eccentricity | Radius |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| b | >1.56 ± 0.14 MJ | 1.271 ± 0.073 | 428.1 ± 1.1 | 0.060 ± 0.043 | — |
Read more about this topic: Epsilon Reticuli
Famous quotes containing the words planetary and/or system:
“We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get round photosynthesis. We cannot say I am not going to give a damn about phytoplankton. All these tiny mechanisms provide the preconditions of our planetary life. To say we do not care is to say in the most literal sense that “we choose death.””
—Barbara Ward (1914–1981)
“In a universe that is all gradations of matter, from gross to fine to finer, so that we end up with everything we are composed of in a lattice, a grid, a mesh, a mist, where particles or movements so small we cannot observe them are held in a strict and accurate web, that is nevertheless nonexistent to the eyes we use for ordinary living—in this system of fine and finer, where then is the substance of a thought?”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)