Seti's Perfect Target - Sun's Twin Discovered

Analysis by Ray Villard                                                                                                                                                                    There are 10 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy that are the same size as our sun. Therefore it should come as no surprise that astronomers have identified a clone to our sun lying only 200 light-years away.

Still, it is fascinating to imagine a yellow dwarf that is exactly the same mass, temperature and chemical composition as our nearest star. In a recent paper reporting on observations of the star — called HP 56948 — astronomer Jorge Melendez of the University of San Paulo, Brazil, calls it “the best solar twin known to date”                                                                                                        His team combined observations from the Very Large Telescope (VLT), Keck Telescope, and Hobby Eberly Telescope to characterize the star and look for planets. Though fast orbiting large planets weren’t found it still begs the question: could HP 56948 have a twin solar system too?