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Does life exist outside our Solar System? To help find out, NASA has created the
Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) to better locate and study distant star systems that hold hope of harboring living inhabitants. A new observational result from a NExSS collaboration is the
featured time-lapse video of
recently discovered planets orbiting the star HR 8799. The images for
the video were taken over seven years from the
Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
Four exoplanets appear as white dots partially circling their parent star, purposefully occluded in the center. The
central star HR 8799 is slightly larger and more massive than
our Sun, while each of the planets is thought to be a few times the mass of
Jupiter. The
HR 8799 system lies about 130
light years away toward the constellation of the Flying Horse (
Pegasus). Research will now
continue on whether any known or potential planets -- or even moons of these planets -- in the
HR 8799 star system could
harbor life.
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