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New Planetary System



HIP 65426b



The Extra solar planet encyclopedia has been updated recently with a new discovery of planetary system. This planetary system called as HIP 65426 is weirdest in all sense. It has got researches and astronomers thinking as in how can such system exist.

HIP 65426 consists of a star named HIP 65426 and a planet named HIP 65426b. The planet’s temperature is around 1300-1600 Kelvin. It has a radius of 1.5 times greater than that of Jupiter and mass between six to twelve times of Jupiter’s mass. A group of astronomers and researchers from Max Planck Institute of Astronomy (MPIA) have found this system.

Now, why is HIP 65426 is weird? This star and planet questions the current models of stars and solar systems. How? This is how. The planet, HIP 65426b is a massive star that orbits a fast spinning star (HIP 65426). The star spins approximately 150 times faster than the sun! Also, the star is 14 million years young. This has raised many questions. Gael Chauvin of University of Grenoble and University of Chile said: “we would expect a planetary system this young to still have a disk of dust, which would show up in the observations. HIP 65426 does not have any such disk known for the moment”. Also the reason why the star is rotation so fast is still unknown.

The planet orbiting the star is at a distance of 100 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Also the system is found in Centaurus constellations, which is 363 light years away.

The Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research instrument (SPHERE) at the Very Large Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, Chile has managed to capture a direct image of this planet. Thomas Henning from MPIA says: “analysis of the direct light of the planet allows us to constrain the composition of planet’s atmosphere with great confidence.” The light from HIP 65426 is reflected from the planet HIP 65426b and captured by SPHERE.

From the information gathered by the SPHERE, the planet is believed to have thick layers of hydrogen gas. SPHERE’s spectrography has also detected the presence of water.

Most gas giants don’t have orbits that far out unless their orbit is disrupted. In this scenario, the planet formed close in and another planet formation was destabilized. This planet fell into the star and this gave rise to the formation of HIP 65426b. This is one possibility. Another possibility is that the star and the planet formed at the same time, which is so far unheard of.

In any case, this planetary formation is puzzling and it has a lot of explaining to do.


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