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NASA has discovered an exoplanet with three stars, one with a bizarre orbit that has left astronomers perplexed.
The planet, known as KOI-5Ab, was discovered in 2009 by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, but it was “abandoned” by scientists because the space telescope had candidates that were easier to identify.
“KOI-5Ab was dropped because it was complicated and we had thousands of applicants,” David Ciardi, chief scientist at NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute, said in a statement. “There were easier choices than KOI-5Ab and we were learning something new from Kepler every day, so KOI-5 was almost forgotten.”
KOI-5Ab is approximately 1,800 light years from Earth. A light year, which measures distance in space, is about 6 trillion miles.
However, thanks to NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and other terrestrial telescopes, KOA-5Ab has been given new life as researchers discover its confusing orbit.
Due to its size, KOA-5Ab is likely a gas giant, similar to Jupiter or Saturn, but it encircles a star in its star system, KOA-5A, once every five days. It is also out of alignment with at least one of the other two stars, and possibly both.
“We don’t know many planets that exist in three-star systems and this one is very special because it has a skewed orbit,” Ciardi added. “We still have a lot of questions about how and when planets can form in multi-star systems and how their properties compare to planets in single-star systems. By studying this system in more detail, perhaps we can get some insight into how the universe makes planets.
In contrast, KOI-5A orbit KOI-5B once every 30 years. KOI-5C revolves around both once every 400 years, leaving the four celestial objects in an oblique orbit due to different planes.
It is not known what caused the tilt of the orbit, although they “believe that the second star struck the planet by gravity during its development, skewing its orbit and causing it to migrate inward” , added the statement from NASA. It is believed that three-star systems make up about 10% of all star systems.
The results were recently presented at a virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Researchers have discovered other planets with three stars in recent memory. In July 2019, the exoplanet LTT 1445Ab was discovered orbiting one of three suns, all of which are described as mid-to-end-of-life red dwarfs.
In September 2020, researchers discovered that the GW Orionis star system, located on the edge of the constellation Orion, had two stars orbiting each other, the third orbiting the two siblings at a distance of d ‘approximately 740 million miles. Inside the rings, there could be dust or the beginnings of a young exoplanet, which could explain the misalignment of the system’s gravitational pull.
More than 4000 exoplanets have been discovered by NASA in total, of which around 50 would be potentially habitable in September 2018. They have the right size and the right orbit of their star to support surface water and, at least theoretically, to support the life.
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