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Distant planets

COMPILED BY NIMI KURIAN

PHOTO: AFP

TIGHTLY PACKED: Near the centre of the Milky Way.

According to a Reuters report, astronomers have discovered a new class of planets outside the solar system that hug their parent stars so tightly they take less than a day to complete an orbit. Using NASA's orbiting Hubble telescope, astronomers found between eight and 16 new planets near the centre of the Milky Way that orbit their parent stars in as few as 10 hours. At 26,000 light-years away, they are the most distant planets yet found and a further indicator that others are probably scattered throughout the Milky Way, said those involved in the project. "This allows us to say with a high degree of confidence that there are billions of planets in our galaxy," said Mario Livio, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore.

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