This is a drawing of where the 3 planets (red dots) would orbit around Upsilon Andromedae. The dashed lines represent where the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars would be if they orbited around the Upsilon Andromedae star.
Click on image for full size
Courtesy of the San Francisco State University Planet Search home page
New Planets Discovered around the Star Upsilon Andromedae
News story originally written on May 5, 1999
Recently two groups of astronomers working seperately reported that they
had found evidence for two more planets orbiting
star Upsilon
Andromedae (c and d on the image to the left). This makes the grand total three when added to the
inner-most planet discovered in 1996 (b in the image).
The two newly discovered planets have elliptical, or oval, shaped orbits. The middle planet is double Jupiter's size, and the outer planet
is four times Jupiter's size. All of the planets are gas giants like Jupiter.
The discovery is especially exciting because it is good evidence that
multi-planet systems are common in the universe, and raises the
possibility that life might have developed in places other than on Earth.
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