NASA is searching the galaxy for Earth--or at least a planet that is similar to our home planet. The space agency has several ongoing projects to identify new planets outside our solar system. Once the planets are identified, the aim is to send space missions to study them and, it is hoped, find one that is similar to Earth.
The Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search (SWEEPS) project conducted by the Hubble Space Telescope recently found 16 new planets. This illustration shows what one of them may look like--a giant, Jupiter-size exoplanet that orbits an unnamed red dwarf star.
This red-hot planet is just 750,000 miles from its star and orbits every 10.5 hours. Scientists speculate that a planet that large and close to a star could have a powerful magnetic field that would trap particles from the sun, creating auroral rings.
A new finding this week brings the total of known planets outside our solar system to 200.
Photo by NASA, ESA, and A. Schaller (STScI)
