2024-05-07 12:36:25
Planet hunters discovered the Neptune-like planet because it flew in front of its parent star and temporarily dimmed the star’s light, an identical phenomenon to a solar eclipse on Earth.
This newly discovered planet is believed to be unusually far from its parent star. The planet orbits its star in 272 days. In addition, this star is currently the brightest known star with a planet in the habitable zone (the zone where liquid water can exist).
Subsequent observations of the system revealed even more peculiarities. There is also an unidentified second planet orbiting the star with an orbital period of 34 days – and the most interesting thing is that there is another star orbiting it (the star).
This unique system is a valuable source of data for scientists seeking to understand how planets form in multiple star systems – and how they stay in stable orbits.
“Finding planets in multiple star systems is critical to understanding how different planets form from the same material,” says Nora Esiner, lead author of the study and a scientist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York.
Star and planetary systems are formed from clouds of gas and dust. When a star forms near another star, the pair can form a binary system. “It’s very interesting that we discovered this,” says N. Eisner, who is also a researcher of the “Planet Hunters TESS” project, which looks for new planets precisely in the aforementioned transit. “Because it is estimated that planets form in binary star systems half as often as in single star systems.”
The newly discovered planet is officially named TOI 4633 c, but has been given the nickname Percival.
It was first identified by citizen scientists – amateur astronomers who carefully examined NASA’s transiting exoplanet research satellite TESS (English: Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) collected data.
The Planet Hunters TESS project allows anyone with a computer connected to the Internet to search for undiscovered planets in the data collected by TESS.
“Every time I spot a possible transit, my heart starts to beat faster and my excitement goes up tremendously,” says Danish citizen scientist Simon Bentsen, who has been working since 2018. volunteers at Planet Hunter TESS. – We are very happy to have contributed to the discovery of a new system. We hope that the new planet will contribute to our understanding of planet formation and answer other interesting questions about planets.”
Citizen science enthusiasts help astronomers manage massive data sets that are too large for scientists to analyze alone. To date, more than 43,000 volunteers from 90 countries have participated in this project, helping to catalog about 25 million items. objects.
Citizen scientists are particularly useful in the search for large orbiting exoplanets that are difficult to identify with computers. “The human brain has a really amazing ability to recognize patterns and filter out noise,” says N. Eisner. “Our algorithms struggle to identify these longer-period planets, but citizen scientists can.”
After 15 citizen scientists identified a possible planet, Eisner and her team decided to take a closer look.
By observing the star’s radial velocity and looking for small fluctuations in the star’s motion that reveal the gravity of a nearby companion star, it became clear that a second planet might be in the vicinity of the star.
Additional images and archival data showed that what scientists initially thought was one star was actually two. The two orbiting stars are so close together that they are impossible to tell apart from any observation point on Earth – but archival observations of the star collected over the past 119 years have shown that the system is actually a binary pair. And this newly discovered exoplanet has the second-longest orbit of any planet detected using TESS data — and one of five with an orbital period of more than 100 days.
“This planet is extraordinary in many ways,” says Eisner. “It’s special because of its orbit, because it’s in the habitable zone, because it’s orbiting a bright star.” But even though scientists think the planet is in the habitable zone, it’s unlikely to be suitable for life—or at least the kind we’re used to. imagine we TOI 4633 c has no solid surface, and its atmosphere probably contains water vapor, hydrogen, and methane.
However, previous studies have shown that long-period planets tend to have moons that could provide a solid surface for life to form. “If this planet had a moon, it would probably have a solid surface, which would be a perfect place for water,” says Eisner.
Scientists would like to learn more about this system – but it will be at least 30 years before the two stars are far enough apart to determine the exact composition of the system.
Determining whether the planets orbit the same star or different stars could help us understand how long such star systems can remain stable. It would also help scientists better predict the discovery of new exoplanets.
In fact, nearly half of all Sun-like stars exist in multi-star systems.
The study is published žurnale „Astrophysical Journal“.
2024-05-07 12:36:25