Posted on 06/02/2025 8:21:46 AM PDT by Red Badger
A bizarre planet may orbit two brown dwarfs in a steep, pole-skimming path—an unheard-of tilt that challenges our understanding of planetary motion. Detected via gravitational wobbles, it might be the first polar-orbiting circumbinary planet ever found. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
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Astronomers have discovered one of the weirdest planetary systems yet: a possible planet, 2M1510 b, appears to orbit over the poles of two brown dwarfs in a sharply tilted path—almost perpendicular to their own orbit.
This freakish setup, unlike anything in our solar system, was detected not by a dip in starlight but through subtle gravitational wobbles captured using ESO’s Very Large Telescope.
A Bizarre New System in Space
Astronomers have uncovered one of the strangest planetary systems ever seen. Nicknamed 2M1510, this system appears to include a planet that loops far over the poles of two brown dwarfs—mysterious celestial bodies that are too heavy to be planets but not quite massive enough to ignite like stars. These two brown dwarfs orbit each other closely, while a third one drifts even farther out, orbiting the pair from a great distance.
In most star systems, including our own solar system, planets typically orbit in the same flat plane as their parent star’s equator. The star’s spin also lines up with this orderly layout, creating a calm, pancake-like structure in space where everything moves together. Everyone is “coplanar:” flat, placid, stately.
Planet Perpendicular Orbit Around Two Brown Dwarfs
Artist’s concept of a planet orbiting two brown dwarfs. The planet is in a polar orbit (red), perpendicular to the mutual orbit of the two brown dwarfs (blue). Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
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A Planet With a Polar Twist
But 2M1510 b, a possible planet still awaiting confirmation, doesn’t follow this familiar pattern. If it is indeed a planet, it orbits the central brown dwarfs in a completely different plane, one that cuts across their orbital path at a sharp 90-degree angle. Imagine two spinning disks forming an X in space. That’s the kind of tilted, polar orbit scientists believe they’ve found here.
Planets that orbit two stars at once, known as “circumbinary” planets, are already quite rare. But one with such an extreme tilt? That’s something scientists had never seen—until now. Thanks to observations from the Very Large Telescope in Chile, operated by the European Southern Observatory, researchers may have just spotted the first of its kind.
VIDEO AT LINK...................
Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found an exoplanet orbiting a pair of peculiar stars at an angle of 90 degrees. There have previously been hints that these so-called polar planets around two stars could exist, but we now have clear evidence that this is the case. This special system was found by observing the orbital path of the two stars being pushed and pulled in a way that could only be explained by the presence of a planet on a polar orbit. This video summarizes the discovery, explaining the nature of these peculiar stars and the method astronomers used to find this odd planet. Credit: ESO
Unraveling the Mystery With Radial Velocity
The method by which the study’s science team teased out the planet’s vertiginous existence is itself a bit of a wild ride. The candidate planet cannot be detected the way most exoplanets – planets around other stars – are found today: the “transit” method, a kind of mini-eclipse, a tiny dip in starlight when the planet crosses the face of its star.
Instead, they used the next most prolific method, “radial velocity” measurements. Orbiting planets cause their stars to rock back and forth ever so slightly, as the planets’ gravity pulls the stars one way and another; that pull causes subtle, but measurable, shifts in the star’s light spectrum. Add one more twist to the detection in this case: the push-me-pull-you effect of the planet on the two brown dwarfs’ orbit around each other. The path of the brown dwarf pair’s 21-day mutual orbit is being subtly altered in a way that can only be explained, the study’s authors conclude, by a polar-orbiting planet.
VIDEO AT LINK...................
This is an animation of the exoplanet 2M1510 (AB) b’s unusual orbit around its host stars, a pair of brown dwarfs. The newly discovered planet has a polar orbit, which is perpendicular to the plane in which the two stars are traveling. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
A Rare Discovery Among Thousands
Only 16 circumbinary planets – out of more than 5,800 confirmed exoplanets – have been found by scientists so far, most by the transit method. Twelve of those were found using NASA’s now-retired Kepler Space Telescope, the mission that takes the prize for the most transit detections (nearly 2,800). Scientists have observed a small number of debris disks and “protoplanetary” disks in polar orbits, and suspected that polar-orbiting planets might be out there as well. They seem at last to have turned one up.
Explore Further: Planet Found Orbiting Two Stars at a Perfect 90-Degree Angle
An international science team led by Thomas A. Baycroft, a Ph.D. student in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Birmingham, U.K., published a paper describing their discovery in the journal Science Advances in April 2025. The planet was entered into NASA’s Exoplanet Archive on May 1, 2025. The system’s full name is 2MASS J15104786-281874 (2M1510 for short).
Reference:
“Evidence for a polar circumbinary exoplanet orbiting a pair of eclipsing brown dwarfs”
by Thomas A. Baycroft, Lalitha Sairam, Amaury H. M. J. Triaud and Alexandre C. M. Correia, 16 April 2025, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adu0627
TATOOINE PING!.....................
Our ignorance far exceeds what we know.
Our ability to know is very limited.
There are probably multiple ways to interpret the data they got coming in. We are just hearing this one, at this time. Likely they will backtrack and invent something new next week to explain this.
Thanks. Reminds me of ST:TNG "Night Terrors" episode. :^)
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It looks like it’s orbiting the average center of mass of the both stars. It makes sense. The aggregate mass of multiple entities.
It sure is easy to stun scientists. That surprises me. In fact, call me “stuned”. That’s it. I’m stuned.
Heck, if feel not only stunned by gobsmacked as well.
Brown dwarves are BROWN not yellow
“unlike anything in our solar system”
considering that they just found this one then how would they know?
Bkmk
There's a cool video on YT that explains how this could happen.
A science teacher sets up a demonstration for his students that allows gravity to be visualized, including how a planet may end up with an orbit in a vertical plane.
See: Gravity Visualized
Our solar system is rather small, only has one sun and all the planets orbit rather conventionally, not at 90 degrees to the poles of the sun, so it is definitely unlike anything in our solar system.
It’s not serious until your Beeber is stuned as well.
😉😁
At a glance it looks like an obvious orbit, a balanced orbit. I always wondered how a planet could orbit two suns since my SF teenage days.
A month ago or so it would have been claimed that there was no such thing in our solar system. So- not buying your argument.
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