and then there were five

Keck/Lick team finds fifth planet in 55 Cancri

Press release
Pretty pictures and animations!

55 Cancri is one of the best studied extrasolar planet systems, it was known to have four planets, and now a fifth has emerged from the data - 45 Earth masses in near 1 AU orbit - in the habitable zone.
Be nice if it has a large moon...!

Meant to blog it, but Greg beat me to it, and has all the beautiful details wrapped up


i-b92a157e7deb0b5116ae542f406c0398-55Canc.jpg

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I guess one of the mysteries here is why didn't 55 Cnc c and f manage to accrete enough gas to become full-fledged Jupiter-size planets, when b and d did.

Mini-Saturns or super-Neptunes I wonder?