Astronomers detect identical twin of Jupiter

Astronomers have discovered an identical twin of Jupiter dubbed as K2-2016-BLG-0005Lb, Which has a similar mass and is at a similar location (420 million miles away) from its star as Jupiter is from our Sun (462 million miles away). The study has been published as a preprint on ArXiv.org and submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Key points:

• The exoplanet is about 17,000 light-years from the Earth, and it was first detected by the Kepler space telescope in 2016.
• To spot the planet, scientists used Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Gravitational Microlensing.
• K2-2016-BLG-0005Lb is “the first bound microlensing exoplanet to be discovered from space-based data.