14 DAY TRIAL // We know there are planets outside of the solar system, plenty of them. We've even seen a few through telescopes. Now the challenge is to find out what they're made of, something as tricky as it sounds.
Knowing that there is a planet, or four, around a star is great, but scientists are a lot more interested in finding out what is inside those planets, what their atmosphere is like, and so on.
Knowing that a planet's atmosphere is similar to Earth's would make it a much better candidate in the search for extraterrestrial life.
We're not quite there yet, but astronomers can determine the chemical makeup of some giant planets surrounding equally giant stars.
Using powerful ground-based telescopes fitted with spectrographs, astronomers have now discovered what four giant red planets around the HR 8799 star are made up of.
These four planets have been the center of attention before, but astronomers have now completed the data collection and made some interesting discoveries.
What's clear is that all the planets are different from anything in our solar system and, what's more, they're quite different from each other too. The full results of the research are set to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.