Darkest known planet discovered by astronomers

Posted by webber | Saturday, August 13, 2011 | | 0 comments »



Astronomers have discovered what they claim is the darkest known planet -- a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b.

An international team says the exoplanet reflects less than 1 per cent of light, which makes it blacker than coal or any planet or moon in our solar system, the 'Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society' reported.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft detected it lurking around the yellow sun-like star GSC 03549-02811 some 750 light years away in the direction of the constellation Draco.

The dark planet lies in the field of view of the Kepler space telescope, whose primary mission is to spot exoplanets using extremely sensitive brightness measurements as far-flung worlds pass in front of their host stars.

First spotted five years ago, TrES-2b races around its star at a distance of just five million kilometers (three million miles).

This is scorchingly close when compared to Earth's 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) distance from the sun and Jupiter's 778 million kilometers (483 million miles).

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