NASA Spitzer Space Telescope Discovers Exoplanet 13,000 Light Years Away

NASA has used the Spitzer Space Telescope to discover many exoplanets and so far, most of those exoplanets have been relatively close in the cosmic scheme of things. The latest exoplanet that NASA has discovered with Spitzer is much farther away from the Earth than most previously discovered. The new planet is a distant gas giant that is about 13,000 light years away making it one of the most distant planets known to man.

NASA wants to determine if planets are more common in the central bulge of our Milky Way galaxy or further out in the arms of the spiral where our solar system is located. To answer that question scientists have been using Spitzer in space to search for exoplanets and a ground based telescope called the Polish Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) Warsaw telescope that is located at an observatory in Chile.

To find distant exoplanets like the recent discovery, the scientist are looking for a so-called blips in magnification when one star crosses in front of another causing gravity to act as a lens to magnify and brighten the more distant star's light. If that distant star happened to have a planet orbiting, the planet might also cause a blip in magnification.

Using these blips, the scientists can characterize planets that are thousands of light-years away. This technique has been used to discover 30 exoplanets so far. The most distant exoplanet ever found was about 25,000 light years away.

SOURCE: NASA