Nasa’s Kepler mission discovered a new moon-size planet:
NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Tiny Planet System
WASHINGTON — NASA’s Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun.
The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring about one-third the size of Earth. It is smaller than Mercury, which made its detection a challenge.
And for the average Joe, here’s an artist’s illustration
Truly fascinating stuff, which Ynet just have to ruin with moronic captions and below average reporting.
Kepler 37b in comparison to the planets in our solar system (Photography: AFP)
Apparently, our solar system now includes Kepler 37b, 37c and 37d, and our moon is now a planet. This sure as hell isn’t a photograph, and crediting AFP for it (reminder, it’s NASA’s), while translating a Reuters article verbatim, is retarded.
Actually, the Moon and the Earth form a double planet system, where you could call either one of them the “planet”.
If you have a proper planet-moon system, the moon “falls away” from the sun during part of its orbit – the moon’s orbit is, part of the time, convex toward the sun. A moon’s orbit is always concave toward the planet it orbits and the planet’s orbit is always concave towards the sun it orbits.
However, for the Earth-Moon system, both orbits are always concave towards the Sun. If you were to plot either orbit on its own, the orbit would form a circle with wobbly edges – it just doesn’t look that way in conventional pictures.
However, people are happier calling the Moon “a moon”, so who am I to argue?