Researc-hers, including one of Indian-origin, have det-ected what appears to be a Saturn-like planet residing near the Milky Way galaxy’s bulge.
Researc-hers, including one of Indian-origin, have det-ected what appears to be a Saturn-like planet residing near the Milky Way galaxy’s bulge.
The newly-discovered exoplanet has a mass somewhere between Saturn and Jupiter and orbits a star with half the mass of the Sun, scientists said. If a star moves in front of another star, the light from the distant star is bent by the gravitational pull of the nearer star and the more distant star is magnified. Researchers used the gravitational micro-lensing technique which does not rely on the light from the host stars. Thus, it can detect planets, even when the host stars cannot be detected, Phys.Org reported.
Researchers, led by Aparna Bhattachar-yaha of University of Notre Dame in the US used the gravitational microlensing method to detect a gas giant planet orbiting the lens stars of a microlensing event. This gravity lens was designated OGLE-2014-BLG-1760 and is the 1,760th microlensing event detected by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment collaboration, resea-rchers said.
