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The dead telescope continues to give
Artist view of the Kepler-47 system. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / T. Pyle
Binary star systems are relatively rare, but astronomers leaning into Kepler telescope data, now gone, have found something unique: a binary system with three planets.
Kepler-47 is a curiosity. At the center of the system is not one but two stars locked in a narrow orbit, making it a circumbinary system. Every 7.45 days, the stars seem to overshadow another. The system also hosts planets, one of which was missed by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.
The latest exoplanet, nicknamed Kepler-47d, brings to three the total number of planets around Kepler-47 and confirms its planet status. Although nine circumbinary systems have been discovered so far, none contain more than one planet. The new planet, Kepler-47d, is in the habitable zone between its Kepler-47b and Kepler-47c brothers. It is also the most voluminous object of all.
Despite its large size – according to researchers, it is about seven times larger and represents at least twice the mass of the Earth – the presence of Kepler-47d was surprisingly tiny in the eyes of the Kepler Space Telescope.
"We had seen a third planet in 2012, but with only one transit, we needed more data," said Jerome Orosz, lead author of the research published in The Astrophysical Journal and professor of astronomy at the San Diego State University. , United States.
The Kepler Space Telescope explores exoplanets using the transit method. As the planets pass near their parent stars in their orbits, the brightness of the star decreases periodically. The team of researchers discovered the signals of a single transit but was not quite sure that it came from a new planet so far.
"With additional transit, the orbital period of the planet could be determined, and we were then able to discover more transits hidden in the noise of previous data," said Orosz.
It took Kepler-47d 87 days to circle its star and it was not detected as easily as the neighboring planets, its orbit not being aligned with the view of the Kepler Space Telescope.
The Kepler-47 system is small; all this corresponds to the size of the Earth's orbit around our Sun. Kepler-47b has a 49-day orbit and Kepler-47c, 303 days. Located approximately 3,340 light-years from the constellation Swan, Kepler-47 is not far removed from another particular circumbinary system, Kepler-1647, home to Kepler-1647b, the largest planet Tatooine .
"This work builds on one of Kepler's most interesting discoveries: compact and compact planet systems are extremely prevalent in our galaxy," said Jonathan Fortney, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California , the astronomer Santa Cruz, not involved in the study.
Here is another nugget of the kindness of the exoplanet
In other news related to exoplanets, the NASA TESS telescope, designed to continue the work of the Kepler probe, has discovered its smallest planet at 52 seconds of light so far. The HD 21749b has been described as a hot sub-Neptune planet and is similar in size to the Earth.
Although it is rocky and located in the habitable zone, life is unlikely to be alive because it is so close to the sun. It has an orbit of only 7.8 days and its surface reaches hot temperatures of about 427 ° C (about 800 degrees Fahrenheit). ®
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