Artist's concept of 55 Cancri's fifth-discovered planet

Filed under pretty pictures, art, extrasolar planets

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This image shows the fifth-discovered planet (fourth in distance from its star) of 55 Cancri, which is about half the mass of Saturn or twice that of Neptune.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

As of November 2007 the nearby sunlike star was known to have five large planets in near-circular orbits around it, more than any other star except the Sun. The fourth planet orbits within the "habitable zone" of its star at a distance of 116.7 million kilometers (72.5 million miles), slightly closer than Earth to our sun, but it orbits a star that is slightly fainter.