Have we discovered another new planetary body?
European astronomers announced they may have discovered a new planetary body orbiting Beta Pictoris. The Star is a massive, young star that is 70 light years away (about 6 trillion miles).  Observers at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope report detecting a planet about eight times heavier than Jupiter in infrared images taken of the star.
“When confirmed, this … will be the closest planet from its star ever imaged,” says a statement from the intergovernmental ESO. The planet is as close to its host star as Saturn is to the Sun.
I think you need to recalculate the distance. Six trillion miles seems wrong to me.
I just did the conversion of light years to miles, and Beta Pictoris is over 364 trillion miles from Earth. Six trillion miles = 1 light year. Very cool that we are able to image this.
Micahel’s right, I come up with 410.879 trillion miles in 70 light years, however.
Used 186,000 mi/sec * 60sec*60min*24hr*365.25days*70 L.Y.
Perhaps the article meant 70 trillion miles, which would be 11.9 L.Y.