14 DAY TRIAL // A team of astronomers with the Institute of Planetary Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) says that it was recently able to discover the closest solar system-analog ever detected. The finding was literally awaiting scientists in the massive batches of data sent to Earth by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope.
The system is called KOI-351, or Kepler-90, and lies around 2,500 light-years away from Earth. It consists of seven extrasolar planets orbiting a Sun-like star in its main sequence. These worlds share many similarities with the planets orbiting our own star, IPR expert Dr. Juan Cabrera explains.
Closest to Kepler-90 are two rocky worlds that act as Earth-sized inner planets. The next three orbits are occupied by so-called mini-Neptunes, which are a bit larger than the class we refer to as super-Earths. The two outermost worlds are regular gas giants, like Jupiter and Saturn.
This is “the first system with a significant number of planets […] that shows a clear hierarchy like the solar system – with small, probably rocky, planets in the interior and gas giants in the (exterior),” Cabrera explains, quoted by Astrobiology Magazine.