MicroFUN 2005
The Neptune-Mass "Super-Earth" Planet of OGLE-2005-BLG-169
The MicroFUN Collaboration, in conjunction with the OLGE and
PLANET/RoboNet collaborations, are pleased to report the discovery of a
Neptune-mass "Super-Earth" planetary companion of the lensing star in
the extremely high-magnification microlensing event OGLE-2005-BLG-169.
If the parent star is a Main-Sequence star, it would have a mass of
0.5M
sun, implying a planet mass of ~13M
earth and a
projected separation of ~2.7AU. This is the second Neptune-mass planet
found via microlensing (the other was OGLE-2005-BLG-390;
Beaulieu et al. 2006), implying that such "Cool Neptune" planets may be
relatively common, with frequency of &16% at 90% confidence.
This is the fourth planet discovered using the Microlensing technique,
and the second found by the MicroFUN collaboration, the other being OGLE-2005-BLG-071, a Jupiter-mass planet
announced in May 2005.
Light Curve of OGLE-2005-BLG-169 composed of data from
the OGLE, MicroFUN, and PLANET/RoboNet sites.
[Full Resolution (352k JPEG)]
- Discovery Paper on astro-ph:
- Gould et al.
(astro-ph/0603276), submitted to ApJ Letters.
- Press Releases:
- The Ohio State
University
- Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics
- University of Notre Dame
- The University of Auckland
- Press Coverage:
- BBC News
- CNN (Reuters)
- The Korea Times (South Korea)
- Space.com
- Discovery Channel
- MSNBC
- The Times (UK)
- National Geographic News
- Fox News
- Melbourne Herald Sun (Australia)
- Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
- Kazinform (Kazakh Information Agency, Kazakhstan)
- People's Daily (China)
- The
Daily Star (Bangaldesh)
- The Times of India
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