New Solar System

Kepler, NASA's space obeservatorium discover solar system that consists of six planets around Sun-like star. By some astronomers, the planets are referred to as mini Neptune.

The five new planets that orbit close to its sun (Kepler 11), closer than Mercury's distance to the planet's sun of our solar system. The sixth planet in the longer distances. Roughly equidistant to the distance the Sun to Venus.

"This is a very tight planetary systems," said Jonathan Fortney, an astronomer at the Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz, as quoted by National Geographic, February 4, 2011.

The planets (named Kepler Kepler 11b to 11g), Fortney said, are relatively small, ranging from 2 to 4.5 times the size of Earth. In addition, the newly discovered planet was also very mild. "This indicates that most of the planets were composed of gas," he said.

From research, it is known that four of the six planets that have a thick atmosphere containing hydrogen and helium.

The two planets are closer to the star has a higher density. It is estimated, the second planet has an atmosphere that consists mainly of water, and only a little hydrogen and helium.

"It can find lots of planets and stars to calculate a planet's womb is a scientific boon," said Fortney. "Just as paleontologists who study dinosaur species, an astronomer can see a lot of other world that was born the same time to better understand the transformation of the planets," he said.

Now, said Fortney, we can do a scientific comparison. "We can predict how the evolution of planets have been distorted over time," he said.