Posted: Thu, Jul 3, 2003, 2:31 PM ET (1831 GMT)
Astronomers announced Thursday that they have discovered an extrasolar planet that more closely resembles Jupiter than any other exoplanet found to date. The planet, orbiting the star HD70642 90 light-years from Earth, is about twice the mass of Jupiter and is in a circular orbit about 60 percent as from the star as Jupiter is from the Sun. A team of American, Australian, and British scientists discovered the star in radial velocity data collected at the 3.9-meter Anglo-Australian Telescope in Australia. Exoplanets similar in size and orbit to Jupiter have so far turned out to be rare, with most planets much larger and/or in elliptical or close orbits to their stars. Some have speculated this is an observational bias, since such planets would be easier to discover using the radial velocity technique than planets similar to Jupiter. The discovery announcement was made at an extrasolar planet science conference in Paris, and a paper about the discovery will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
