The Very Large Telescope in Chile has photographed a planet orbiting a star in a multi-star system positioned some 480 light-years from Earth.
The exoplanet, 15 times more massive than our solar system‘s largest planet Jupiter, orbits a small star that itself orbits a bigger star. Also orbiting the larger star is a brown dwarf, or “failed” star. Brown dwarfs are given such a dark moniker because these objects aren’t massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of their cores like typical stars do, but are still too large to be called planets.
The system of the 2 stars and the brown dwarf, collectively called HIP 81208, has been known to astronomers for a very long time. However the existence of an exoplanet in orbit of the smaller star got here as a surprise to astronomers who recently re-examined images of the system taken earlier by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile.
The newly discovered exoplanet can be quite massive, nearly large enough to be called a brown dwarf itself.
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The team’s discovery marks the primary hierarchical quadruple system to be found using direct imaging, ESO said in a statement. Most exoplanets are discovered through the so-called transit method, which involves observing subtle dips in a star’s brightness attributable to a planet passing in front of its disk from the purpose of the observer.
Direct imaging is, in essence, traditional photography. Nonetheless, astronomers using this method to capture deep space worlds use very powerful telescopes and super-sensitive cameras to see planetary subjects directly. And within the reanalyzed images, astronomers from the Paris Observatory detected the enormous exoplanet making a blob within the ring of sunshine surrounding its parent star.
The invention will help astronomers further their understanding of the formation of complex systems, ESO said within the statement.