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Astronomers have discovered a giant planet whose extreme orbit makes it incomparable.
Called HR 5183b, the exoplanet is at least three times more massive than Jupiter, and it follows a long path in a loop around a star located about 100 light-years from the constellation of the Virgin. If the exoplanet was in our own solar system – in which the Earth and other planets move around the sun in almost circular orbits – its extremely elliptical orbit would take it beyond Neptune towards the planet. Orbit of Jupiter (see video below).
The discovery shows that "our universe is full of strange solar systems, totally different from ours," said Sarah Blunt, a postgraduate student at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and one of the scientists at the university. origin of this discovery, in an email. "It seems that every time we think we have found the strangest solar system, something totally strange is discovered."
Blunt, the main author of an article on the discovery, described the exoplanet as "wacky object" and compared his movements around his host star, the HR 5183, to a "whiplash", which accelerates as it passes near the intense gravitation of the star, which slows it away and then starts the cycle again.
She said that other exoplanets with highly elliptical or eccentric orbits have been observed, but that HR 5183b is the only one that has orbited around its host star at such distances.
"Something had to interact with the planet to increase its eccentricity," she said in an e-mail, adding that one possible scenario was that the HR 5183b had already had a neighboring planet whose gravitational deviation # 39; exoplanet. But it could have been a star that deflected the exoplanet – or "something we did not think about."
Astronomers did not directly observe the HR 5183b, but deduced its size and orbit by observing tiny "flickers" in the light of its host star, caused by the gravitational shift in gravity. a planet in orbit (a technique known as the radial velocity method). The data that led to the discovery come from observations made at the Lick Observatory in Hamilton, California; the Keck Observatory at Waimea on the island of Hawaii; and the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas.
Brendan Bowler, an astronomer from the University of Texas who did not participate in the new research, hailed the discovery, saying that the extreme orbit of the exoplanet around his star " tells us something about the periphery of planetary systems ". He called the discovery "a stepping stone" on the way to "understand how planets form and understand their statistical properties".
The astronomers at the origin of the discovery are not yet finished with HR 5183 b. Blunt said that it would be possible to determine the absolute mass of the exoplanet using data from the Gaia Space Observatory of the European Space Agency, which aims to produce a detailed census of the About 1 million stars. In addition, astronomers could simulate the formation of HR 5183b to learn more about the conditions that led to such an exoplanet.
"There are many next steps for this planet!" she says.
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