A size comparison of the Earth, Wolf 503b and Neptune. The color blue for Wolf 503b is imaginary; nothing is yet known about the atmosphere or surface of the planet.
Credit: NASA Goddard/Robert Simmon (Earth), NASA/JPL (Neptune)
Twice size of Earth, Wolf 503b orbits star every six days and was discovered by an international team of Canadian, American and German researchers using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. The find is described in a new study whose lead author is Merrin Peterson, an Institute for research on exoplanets (iREx) graduate student who started her master’s degree at Université de Montréal (UdeM) in May.
Wolf 503b is about 145 light years from Earth in the Virgo constellation; it orbits its star every six days and is thus very close to it, about 10 times closer than...
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