The European Southern Observatory (ESO) using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument have discovered a planetary system containing between five to seven planets orbiting the Sun-like star HD 10180. Five of the planets are approximately the size of Neptune, which is about 17 times the mass of Earth. All five of the “Neptune” planets that are orbiting the star would lie within the within a distance equivalent to the orbit of Mars.

There is also evidence of two further planets. The first planet is a approximately 65 times the mass of Earth, making it very Saturn like (which is 95 times the mass of Earth). This planet orbits the star every 2,200 days.

The second planet is being called Earth-like. That is because they think that it has about 1.4 times the mass of Earth. However, there is one problem. This Earth-like planet lies very close to the star, at approximately 2 percent of the Earth–Sun distance. It orbits the star every 1.18 days. This makes it too hot to support life as we know it. Mercury, on the other hand, orbits our sun every 88 days.

In this zoom sequence we start with a wide-field view of the southern sky, including the Magellanic Clouds. We gradually close in on the apparently unremarkable star HD 10180 in the little-known constellation of Hydrus (the Male Water Snake). Observations with the HARPS spectrograph, attached to ESO’s 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla, Chile, have revealed the definite presence of five planets and evidence for two more in orbit around this star. This system is similar to the Solar System in terms of number of planets and the presence of a regular pattern in the sizes of the orbits. If confirmed the closest planet detected would be the lightest yet known outside the Solar System, with a mass that could be as small as only 1.4 times that of the Earth.

credit: ESO/A. Fujii/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Music: John Dyson (from the album “Darklight”).

via : Zooming Into Sun-Like Star HD 10180