A team of  Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad have discovered a sub-Saturn or super-Neptune size exoplanet. The planet is about 27 times the mass of Earth and six times the radius of Earth. It is some 600 light years away from the Earth. The planet that revolves around the sun was discovered by measuring its mass by 'PRL Advance Radial-velocity Abu-Sky Search' (PARAS) spectrograph integrated with 1.2m telescope at PRL's Gurushikar Observatory in Mount Abu.

With this discovery, India is now among the league of countries that have discovered planets around stars. Scientists have named the host star as EPIC 211945201 or K2-236 and the planet as EPIC 211945201b or K2-236b. The planet goes around the star in about 19.5 days. Its surface is around 600 degree Celsius and is very close to the host star.

Paras spectrograph has also made independent measurements of the mass of the planet body as data from Nasa’s K2 (Kepler2) photometry could not confirm the nature of the system.

ISRO website states that the 1.2 m InfraRed Telescope at Mount Abu is the first major facility in India that is specifically designed for ground-based infrared observations of celestial objects. The Infrared Observatory is situated at an altitude of 1680 meters above mean sea level on top of the Gurushikhar peak of Aravali range. It was found to be 6 Earth radii but did the data available on it was not sufficient to confirm its nature. Ice, silicates and iron content make up 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the total mass.

The newly discovered planet adds to the list of exoplanets with masses between 10 and 70 MEarth and radii between 4 and 8 REarth. To date, only 23 such systems are known with such precise measurement of mass and radii.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 08, 2018 04:51 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).