CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronomers have discovered a rare in-sync solar system with six planets moving like a grand cosmic orchestra, untouched by outside forces since their birth billions of years ago.
The find, announced Wednesday, can help explain how solar systems across the Milky Way galaxy came to be. This one is 100 light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
A pair of planet-hunting satellites — NASA’s Tess and the European Space Agency’s Cheops — teamed up for the observations.
None of the planets in perfect synchrony are within the star’s so-called habitable zone, which means little if any likelihood of life, at least as we know it.
“Here we have a golden target” for comparison, said Adrien Leleu of the University of Geneva, who was part of an international team that published the results in the journal Nature.
This star, known as HD 110067, may have even more planets. The six found so far are roughly two to three times the size of Earth, but with densities closer to the gas giants in our own solar system. Their orbits range from nine to 54 days, putting…
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