A trio of super-Earths Astronomers have found a triple system of
super-Earths around the star HD 40307. June 16, 2008 Provided by
ESO, Garching, Germany June 16, 2008 Artist's impression of the
trio of super-Earths discovered by an European team using the
HARPS spectrograph on ESO's 3.6-m telescope at La Silla, Chile,
after 5 years of monitoring. The three planets, having 4.2, 6.7,
and 9.4 times the mass of the Earth, orbit the star HD 40307
with periods of 4.3, 9.6, and 20.4 days, respectively. Photo by
ESO Today, at an international conference, a team of European
astronomers announced a remarkable breakthrough in the field of
extra-solar planets. Using the HARPS instrument at the ESO La
Silla Observatory, they have found a triple system of super-
Earths around the star HD 40307. Moreover, looking at their
entire sample studied with HARPS, the astronomers count a total
of 45 candidate planets with a mass below 30 Earth masses and an
orbital period shorter than 50 days. This implies that one
solar-like star ou