NASA scientists discover 'Iceball' planet through microlensing

This artist's concept shows OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, a planet discovered through a technique called microlensing. Photo Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

New Delhi: NASA scientists have discovered a new 'iceball' planet with the mass of Earth, orbiting its star at the same distance that orbit the Sun, through the technique of microlensing.

According to the US space agency, the new planet is likely far too cold to be habitable for life because its star is so faint. But the discovery adds to scientists' understanding of the types of planetary systems that exist beyond our own.

Yossi Shvartzvald, a NASA postdoctoral fellow based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and lead author of a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters said, "This 'iceball' planet is the lowest-mass planet ever found through microlensing."

Microlensing is a technique that facilitates the discovery of distant objects by using background stars as flashlights. When a star crosses precisely in front of a bright star in the background, the gravity of the foreground star focuses the light of the background star, making it appear brighter.

A planet orbiting the foreground object may cause an additional blip in the star’s brightness. In this case, the blip only lasted a few hours.

This technique has found the most distant known exoplanets from Earth, and can detect low-mass planets that are substantially farther from their stars than Earth is from our sun.

The newly discovered planet, called OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, aids scientists in their quest to figure out the distribution of planets in our galaxy.

OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is located in the disk, as are two planets previously detected through microlensing by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Geoff Bryden, astronomer at JPL and co-author of the study said, "Although we only have a handful of planetary systems with well-determined distances that are this far outside our solar system, the lack of Spitzer detections in the bulge suggests that planets may be less common toward the center of our galaxy than in the disk."