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Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: Smaller "Siblings" of Jupiter, Saturn Discovered


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An artist's rendering shows two newfound planets circling a star about 5,000 light-years away. These exoplanets resemble scaled-down versions of Jupiter and Saturn, astronomers say.

The planets were found using a technique called gravitational microlensing, which uses the gravity of stars and planets nearer to Earth as a lens to magnify more distant objects.

Image © Science