• Question: what's the furthest planet that we have seen?

    Asked by anon-209481 to Verity, Sergio, Nick, Maria, David, Annette on 8 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: David Whitworth

      David Whitworth answered on 8 Mar 2019:


      Its called SWEEPS 11 and is found 27710 (1.62897×10^17 miles) light years from Earth. It is what is known as a hot jupiter, this means its about the same size as Jupiter but is very very close to its star, so close that it only takes about 2 days to complete 1 orbit.

      The most distant planet that is in the goldilocks zone, the region around a star that would allow water to form and possibly support life is Kepler-443b, at 2,540 (1.4403×10^16 miles) light-years distant although there is an unconfirmed planet, KOI-5889.01, that is over 5,000 light-years away.

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