India Among Few Countries to Discover Exoplanet Beyond Our Solar System

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India finally enters the list of few countries to discover exoplanet surrounding a star beyond our solar system

With the advancement in space science and technology humans are not only able to explore different planets in our solar system but also beyond the far darkness of infinite space in another solar system. We always want to explore beyond the infinite darkness of space to search for any exoplanet with habitable atmospheric conditions and probable sign of alien life. The modern advance satellites, telescopes and other astronomical instruments have made these investigation a far more easier than it was few decades ago. Now we can hunt for exoplanets beyond the darkness of infinite space in different solar systems within our massive galaxy. Our advanced instruments and technologies now enable us to accurately study in details about the characteristic of any exoplanet to examine its probability to sustain alien life sometimes in past or in near future. This year NASA launched its big search mission, The TESS Mission, to search for exoplanets beyond our solar system that have the probability to sustain life forms. Discovery of exoplanets surrounding a star in another solar system are considered as major notable findings and only very few countries and their space agencies have been able to achieve this great height.

Now India also make its way among the few countries to discover an exoplanet surrounding a star beyond our own solar system. Physical Research Laboratory is an eminent national institute for space research under Department of Space, Government of India, has achieved this great milestone with endless effort by the team of scientists and engineers under the leadership of Prof. Abhijit Chakraborty. They have reported the existence of an exoplanet, designated as EPIC 211945201b and having dimension similar to sub-size of Saturn or super-size of Neptune, surrounding a star analogous to our sun and designated as EPIC 211945201. The entire research work has been published by IOP Science in The Astronomical Journal of The American Astronomical Society. The discovery has been made using the ingenuously developed high-resolution "PRL Advance Radial-velocity Abu-sky Search" (PARAS) spectrograph combined with 1.2 m telescope that have allowed to measure the mass of this exoplanet beyond our solar system. This highly advance instrumental facility lies at PRL's Gurushikhar Observatory situated in Mount Abu, India and accredited with discovery of the 23rd planetary system like this one known till date. Most of these exoplanets are having mass of 10-70 times the mass of Earth with size of 4-8 times the radius of Earth. It is really appreciable that very few spectrographs exist all over the world which can give such precise measurement of the mass of any exoplanet with PARAS as the only of its kind in Asia that can precisely measure the mass of any exoplanet surrounding a star similar to our sun. The significance of this discovery lies in better understanding of the mechanism of formation of sub-size Saturn or super-size Neptune like exoplanets surrounding the host or parent star and lying very close to them. Moreover it will also give an insight to the mechanism of planet formation surrounding stars similar to our sun for better understanding of the formation mechanism of the planets of our solar system surrounding our sun. Future studies may reveal further details about the internal structure of this exoplanet and there is a good opportunity to study the planet-star alignment due to relatively higher brightness of the parent or host star.