Super Earth

                                                            First light from a Super-Earth spotted !
According to NASA's scientists who are studying the alien planet using Spitzer Space Telescope that light from a "super Earth" has been detected for the first time. The light from Jupiter-like gas giants has been seen before. But the new finding proves that researchers can now detect the infrared glow from smaller, more Earth-like worlds.

The planet called 55 Cancri e, falls into a class of planets termed super Earths, which are more massive than our planet Earth but lighter than giant planets like Neptune. The planet is about twice as big and eight times as massive than Earth. It orbits a bright star, called 55 Cancri, in 18 hours. Like the majority of known extrasolar planets, 55 Cancri e was discovered by detecting variations in its star's radical velocity.

 Since the planet's discovery in 2004, scientists have unearthed a number of its properties. Dubbed 55 Cancri e, the planet lies roughly 40 light-years away in the constellation Cancer, the Crab. The planet has a perpetually sun-facing side that is about 1725° C. Despite the high temperatures, it is still a waterworld - a planet with atmospheres extremely high in water vapour. High temperatures and pressures on waterworlds turn the water into states of matter that do not exist on Earth such as hot ice or superfluid water.

Why is it called Super-Earth ?
Compared with our planet Earth, 55 Cancri e has radius around two times as that of Earth. Its mass is about 7.8 Earth masses, thus classifying it as the Super-Earth.

It was initially unknown whether 55 Cancri e was a small gas giant like Neptune or a large rocky terrestrial planet. The high density on this planet suggests that the planet has a "rock-iron" composition supplemented by a significant mass of water, gas or other light elements. A scientist of the California Institute of Technology said, "One of the best ways to get information on a planet is to study the light that is emitted and to do that you have to be able to detect the light in the first place".

Now that scientists have demonstrated how to use Spitzer to spot and characterize small planets, they will be able to use similar techniques to explore other super-Earths.