The giant planet was discovered near a large star
B Centauri b The artist’s idea of the planet orbiting at least six times the mass of the Sun.
What: ESO / L. Calcutta
The planets are not only in our solar system – but also with other stars. About 5000 extraterrestrials have been detected so far. A newly discovered model now presents great mysteries.
NOh, astronomers’ previous belief, it shouldn’t even be: An international team of researchers has discovered a giant planet in a vast orbit around a large binary star. Such stars are very hot and need to prevent their radiation from forming planets. So the newly discovered celestial body, for example, must have appeared in a different way than the planets in our solar system. So the researchers of the journal “Nature”.
Astronomers have now discovered nearly 5,000 planets in other stars – called exoplanets. Marcus Johnson and his colleagues at the University of Stockholm explain, “Planets form around a vast expanse of stars, but more than twice the mass of our Sun, and fewer planets.
Not even a single planet is known for stars three times the mass of the Sun. Most methods used by astronomers to search for extraterrestrials are particularly sensitive to planets in very narrow orbits. So it is not yet clear whether massive stars have planets in long orbits.
Johnson and his team searched for planets farther away from massive, hot stars as part of a special program – the “P-Star Exoplanet Extensive Exploration”. To do this, the researchers used SPHERE, A new accessory Very large telescope European Southern Laboratory in Chile. SPHERE blocks the bright light of the star being examined so that it can detect very low brightness of nearby objects.
The image shows b Centauri and its giant planet b Centauri b, which were recorded by chronograph on ESO’s largest telescope with the SPHERE instrument.
Quelle: ESO / Johnson et al.
Scientists have discovered that they are searching for the binary star P Centauri, 325 light-years away: they stumbled upon a planet eleven times heavier than Jupiter, which orbits a hundred times farther than its star Jupiter. From the sun. The total mass of P. centauri is between 6 and 10 solar masses – higher than the previous limit. The main star of the system is three times hotter than our Sun, and therefore emits more UV and X-rays.
“Such stars are considered the most destructive and dangerous environment,” Johnson and his colleagues said. “That is why it was previously thought that it would be very difficult to form large planets there. However, our discovery shows that there may be planets with more massive stars than we expected based on an extension of previous discoveries.” Mass.
According to today’s concept of astronomers, stars are formed from gas clouds. Rotating disks of gas and dust form around young stars, in which planets can form. But with hot stars like B Centauri, the star’s radiation destroys the disk very quickly. Johnson and his colleagues speculate that there may have been an extra dense area in the large gas cloud that formed P Centauri.
Astronomer Matthias Samland explains from the study that astronomers had an idea of what planetary systems should look like in other stars, which are closely related to our solar system. Astronomy Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg: “However, over the past ten years, the discovery of many planetary systems in astonishing and innovative structures has meant that we have to broaden our narrow view of history.”
The discovery of P. Centauri’s mate now adds another chapter to the massive stars to this story. “Exploring how this planet came to be would be a fascinating task,” Johnson said. Because it is still a mystery.
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