So I decided to make my exo-planet blog hosted other than using the free blogger blog, this way I can control a lot more things about it a lot easier. We now know that there are well over discovered and confirmed extra solar planets out there in our galaxy. The thing is that the majority of the exo planets that have been discovered are huge, around Jupiters size, nothing quite like earth, that was until a couple of months ago when the size of COROT-7B was observed to be just twice the diameter of Earth.
We cannot yet determine the mass of COROT-7B, but by judging from the amount the parent star wobbles, we are guessing that it has a mass that could be 6-10 times that of Earth. So this discovery of the smallest extrasolar planet yet is very exciting, the chances that there is life on this planet is very slim.
COROT -7B orbits very close to its parent star, COROT-7, only a few stellar radii away, and the small planet only takes 20 hours to make a complete orbit. The surface is extremely hot, and it is very possible that the whole planet could be covered in lava.
The small exoplanet COROT-7B was found using the transit method, which is when a planet orbits in front of its parent star, it will dim some of the light from that star. By making several observations scientists are then ready to confirm that the star actually hosts a planet.
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Actually, Corot7B has 1.44 diameter of earth, if Corot7B was say 12 times more massive and a rocky planet than its diameter would be around twice that of the Earth.
2 Masses of earth - 1.2 diameter of earth
3 Masses of earth - 1.27 diameter of earth
4 Masses of earth - 1.335 diameter of earth
5 Masses of earth - 1.425 diameter of earth (depending on internal composition)
7 Masses of earth - 1.5 diameter of earth
8 Masses of earth - 1.57 diameter of earth
10 Masses of earth - 1.625 diameter of earth
12 Masses of earth 1.84 diameter of earth
Gaseous planets start from around 13 masses or earth, and diameter could be between 3 and 4 earths for a Neptune like planet to 15 diameters of earth for a super Jupiter planet, with 8-10 masses of Jupiter.
fine example
http://aia2009.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/corot7b.jpg