Posted on 04/18/2023 7:47:06 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
An international research team led by UTSA associate professor of astrophysics Thayne Currie has made a breakthrough in accelerating the search for new planets.
In a paper slated for publication April 14 in Science, Currie reports the first exoplanet jointly discovered through direct imaging and precision astrometry, a new indirect method that identifies a planet by measuring the position of the star it orbits. Data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii and space telescopes from the European Space Agency (ESA) were integral to the team’s discovery...
By contrast, indirect planet detection methods determine a planet's existence through its effect on the star it orbits. This approach can provide detailed measurements of the planet’s mass and orbit...
The newly discovered exoplanet, called HIP 99770 b, is about 14 to 16 times the mass of Jupiter and orbits a star that is nearly twice as massive as the Sun. The planetary system also shares similarities with the outer regions of our solar system. HIP 99770 b receives about as much light as Jupiter, our solar system’s most massive planet, receives from the Sun. Its host star is surrounded by icy debris left over from planet formation, similar to our solar system’s Kuiper belt, the ring of icy objects observed around the Sun.
Currie and team used the Hipparcos-Gaia Catalogue of Accelerations to advance their discovery of HIP 99770 b. The catalogue consists of data from ESA’s Gaia mission and Hipparcos, Gaia’s predecessor, providing a 25-year record of accurate star positions and motions. It revealed that the star HIP 99770 is likely being accelerated by the gravitational pull of an unseen planet.
(Excerpt) Read more at utsa.edu ...
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https://interestingengineering.com/science/colossal-exoplanet-orbiting-a-wobbling-star
https://www.space.com/giant-exoplanet-discovered-gaia-star-mapping-data
https://www.universetoday.com/160962/astronomers-find-a-planet-using-gaia-data/
Not to detract from the discovery, but the poor editing of the headline already detracts from the headline. An exoplanet by definition is outside the "Earth's" solar system which is also redundant because the "solar" system is the stellar and planetary system that the earth is part of along with the sun which is why it is called the solar system, sol meaning sun.
Cut ‘em some slack, this was written for a college-aged audience, gotta spell everything out.
It would be cool if they found a new exoplanet inside our solar system. Even so-called science writers are often dumb as bricks.
I’m still mad over Pluto.
Uranus (I am not joking here) is one candidate. Its spin is highly tilted with respect to the ecliptic. It is difficult to reconcile conservation of angular momentum with this spin without postulating an unknown event in the planet's past.
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