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Agencies
Astronomers recently confirmed the existence of a giant gas planet orbiting a star in a three-star system in a system 1,800 light years away.
This system, called KOI-5, is located in the constellation Cygnus, and the existence of an extrasolar planet was confirmed more than a decade after its discovery by the Kepler Space Telescope.
In fact, this planet – now known as KOI-5Ab – was Kepler’s second candidate for exoplanet detection, when it began operations in 2009, according to ScienceAlert.
Astronomer David Shardy of NASA’s Institute for Exoplanet Sciences said, “KOI-5Ab was dropped because it was complicated, and we had thousands of applicants. There were easier choices than KOI-5Ab, and we were learning something new from Kepler every day, so we mostly forgot about KOI-5. “
Exoplanet hunters tend to avoid the complexities of multi-star systems. Out of more than 4,300 exoplanets confirmed to date, less than 10% belong to multi-star systems, even if these systems dominate the galaxy.
As a result, the properties of exoplanets in multi-star systems are little known, compared to those in orbit around a single star.
After Kepler’s discovery, Shardy and other astronomers used ground-based telescopes such as the Palomar Observatory, WM Keck Observatory, and the Gemini North Telescope to study the system.
In 2014, they identified two companion stars, KOI-5B and KOI-5C. This made it extremely difficult to tell whether the drop in starlight observed by Kepler was caused by an exoplanet or something else.
And in 2018, TESS took on the mission, and when he looked at Cygnus, he also lobbied a candidate exoplanet orbiting KOI-5A.
“I thought to myself, I remember that goal. But we are still unable to determine if the planet is real or if the light in the data was from another star in the system – it could be a fourth star,” he said. Shardy said.
He and his team got to work and reanalyzed all previous data.
In excellent testimony to the planet-hunting capabilities of our telescopes, the researchers found that yes, an exoplanet does in fact orbit KOI-5A, at an oblique angle to at least one of the stars in the Triple System.
“We don’t know a lot of planets in three-star systems,” Shardy said. “This planet is very special because its orbit is skewed.”
What scientists were able to confirm is that the planet, KOI-5Ab, could be a gas giant about half the mass of Saturn and 7 times the size of Earth, in a very narrow orbit of five days around KOI-5A.
KOI-5A and KOI-5B form a relatively close binary, with an orbital period of about 30 years. The third star, KOI-5C, revolves around the duo at a much greater distance, with a period of around 400 years – slightly larger than Pluto’s orbit of 248 years.
So if you could stand KOI-5Ab, KOI-5A would rule the sky. And KOI-5C will look like a super bright star. The KOI-5Ab orbiter is not parallel to KOI-5B, which is interesting.
And if all bodies were formed from the same rotating disc of matter, then they should be aligned somewhat on the same plane, like the planets in the solar system around the equator of the sun.
Researchers believe that KOI-5B could have disrupted the gravitational pull of an exoplanet, causing it to misalign during the formation of the planet. And we’ve seen other evidence that it could happen.
The three-star system was unveiled last year with an extremely wobbly protoplanetary disk. And all the planets that form there will probably end up in very strange orbits. So, while we’re not sure there are many exoplanets in three-star systems, finding more will help astronomers model these processes and learn more about the Earth dynamics involved.
“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, we might have a glimpse of how the universe was made, ”said Shardy. Planets. “
The discovery was announced at the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
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