Posted on 05/01/2015 9:10:45 AM PDT by Red Badger
The Australian discovery of a strange exoplanet orbiting a small cool star 500 light years away is challenging ideas about how planets form.
"We have found a small star, with a giant planet the size of Jupiter, orbiting very closely," said researcher George Zhou from the Research School of Astrophysics and Astronomy.
"It must have formed further out and migrated in, but our theories can't explain how this happened."
In the past two decades more than 1,800 extrasolar planets (or exoplanets) have been discovered outside our solar system orbiting around other stars.
The host star of the latest exoplanet, HATS-6, is classed as an M-dwarf, which is one of the most numerous types of stars in galaxy. Although they are common, M-dwarf stars are not well understood. Because they are cool they are also dim, making them difficult to study.
HATS-6 emits only one twentieth of the light of our sun. The giveaway that the faint star had a planet circling it was a dip in its brightness caused as the planet passed in front of the star, observed by small robotic telescopes including telescopes at the ANU Siding Spring Observatory.
To confirm the signal was a planet and not a blip in the system, Dr Bayliss called in help from one of the world's largest telescopes, the Magellan Telescope in Chile, and an amateur astronomer, T G Tan, who operates from his backyard in Perth.
"T G Tan has been really helpful on our projects. He was able to catch the transit of the planet from Perth, after it had set over our horizon," Mr Zhou said.
Subsequent observations from the Chilean telescope, and spectra taken from the ANU 2.3 metre telescope at Siding Spring, confirmed the planet had an orbit of just one-tenth that of mercury, and orbits its star every 3.3 days.
"The planet has a similar mass to Saturn, but its radius is similar to Jupiter, so it's quite a puffed up planet. Because its host star is so cool it's not heating the planet up so much, it's very different from the planets we have observed so far," Mr Zhou said.
"The atmosphere of this planet will be an interesting target for future study."
The research is published in the Astronomical Journal.
Explore further: Perth's planet hunter helps discover unusual exoplanet
More information: "HATS-6b: A Warm Saturn Transiting an Early M Dwarf Star, and a Set of Empirical Relations for Characterizing K and M Dwarf Planet Hosts," 2015. The Astronomical Journal 149 166. DOI: 10.1088/0004-6256/149/5/166
Journal reference: Astronomical Journal
An artist's impression of HATS-6. Credit ANU
George Zhou at the Hawaiian Mauna Kea observatory. Credit: Daniel Bayliss
Clearly it’s Bush’s fault.
The fact is, their theory of planetary formation, namely the “planetary nebula” hypothesis, has already been thoroughly compromised by other observations, but they don’t have any new theory to replace it, so not many scientists will admit as much.
Hopefully, as they keep finding data like this, they will eventually realize they can’t keep up the charade and start entertaining more feasible hypotheses.
It strikes me that the method by which planets are discovered requires on-plane display to the Earth. The odds of that being the case see low. Even if most solar systems are in a similar plane to the galaxy, we would be looking up or down at most of them.
Or Genesis 1:1
The trinity is not a pair nor symbiotic
If it was a Dyson sphere, we wouldn’t see it as the star would be inside it.
Seems like I remember reading years ago somewhere that OUR solar system is nearly 90 degrees to the galactic plane................
Yeah, the vacuum would have sucked it in....................8^)
“Strange new worlds”...
i know. The giant planet might contain a tiny star. The visible star being the “other” star in a binary Configuration.
Ahh—gotcha.
There is also the matter that outer planets have much longer orbits 30 to 100+ earth years) so we are only seeing inner planets right now.
“The odds of that being the case see low. Even if most solar systems are in a similar plane to the galaxy, we would be looking up or down at most of them.”
Well, yes, but the thing is, the distances between stars laterally are much greater than the differences in “altitude”, compared to the galactic disc. So, say you are on the first floor of a building, looking at something on the 20th story of another building, but that building is 20 miles away. For all intents and purposes, at that distance, the angle you are viewing is practically zero degrees.
When I look at the night sky the are an equal number of stars I all diections, if you ignore the very distant glow of the Milky Way.
“if you ignore the very distant glow of the Milky Way”
The Milky Way is actually closer to us than many of those lights you are looking at in the sky. We are IN the Milky Way galaxy, so all the stars near us are located along that general plane. Anything far above or below it is really far from us, too far for them to be detecting any exoplanets there I think.
That said, there are basically an equal number of stars in any direction. That’s actually an interesting fact that highlights a funny thing about the current cosmology. The scientists take it as a presupposition that there is no local “center of the universe” to speak of. However, when we look at the distribution of stars, and especially their red shifts/blue shifts (whether they are moving towards us or away from us), it is obvious that we are actually located at or very near to the center of the universe. The data proves this, but scientists don’t like to admit it because they are attached to their supposition, which reinforces the idea that there is “nothing special” about earth or our solar system.
The Milky way is 10,000 light years in depth. We are searching for exoplanets within 30,000 light years. Therefore, it is very much like trying to look into the windows of the 20 story building a block away.
“The Milky way is 10,000 light years in depth.”
Yes, but the vast majority of stars in the galaxy are located in the middle of that distribution.
Thanks Red Badger.
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Yes, but the “typical hot jupiter” itself is not compatible with the planetary nebula hypothesis. The fact that we find them so common just makes it that much more difficult to explain them away.
Marking for later read. 9 year old is home sick from school and needs reading material
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I’m .. too massive for my star
Too massive for my star
So massive by far...
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