Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory have announced quite the find: a solar system 42 light years from us that harbors three super-Earths!
The planets orbit the star HD 40307, a K-type star... meaning it's slightly less massive, cooler, and a bit more orange than the Sun. Still, the planets are cooked; they orbit the star with periods of 4.3, 9.6, and 20.4 days, so they're very close to the star itself. The surface temperatures of all three must be well over 1000 degrees Celsius. The planets are big, too, with masses of 4.2, 6.7, and 9.4 times that of the Earth. That makes them too small, as far as we know, to be gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn (which have masses of 100 or more times the Earth's), though it doesn't rule out these being small giants like Uranus and Neptune (roughly 15 and 17 times the Earth). ...
