Skip to main content

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.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pluto-The controversial planet

Pluto has been our favorite planet since 2006. The reason why I wrote this blog is because NASA is ready to explore the planet and study it closely through its mission New Horizons. So before we get to know about this mission, let’s first get to know about Pluto. HISTORY: Pluto was discovered on February 18, 1930 in the Kuiper Belt. Kuiper belt is a ring of bodies beyond Neptune. Originally Pluto was considered as the ninth planet in solar system. But studying its size, mass, density etc. the International Astronomical Unit (IAU) defined the term “planet”. The definition goes as- “ planet  is a body that orbits the Sun, is massive enough for its own gravity to make it round, and has cleared its neighbourhood" of smaller objects around its orbit.”   According to this definition, Pluto could not be classified as a planet and hence was reclassified as a “dwarf planet” in 2006. Although it is a dwarf planet compared to other eight planets, it is the second m...
2 comments
Read more

The Black Hole Party

The very idea of black hole is baffling and scary at the same time. Many scientists have dedicated their lives for studying these scary things. Why scary? C’mon let’s be honest.   Getting sucked by a black hole due to its strong gravitational field means instant death. Although we still don’t know what exactly will happen if a human being falls in the black hole , we have drawn our conclusions based on what it does to light. That’s why; it may sound even scarier when we learned that scientists have discovered a dozen of black holes teaming up at the center of our galaxy-Milky way.   Data from NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray observatory has allowed researchers to detect a group of black holes surrounding Sagittarius A*. Sagittarius A* is a super massive black hole at the center of Milky Way-that’s where we are. For a while now, scientists have believed that there is something at this place and now it’s confirmed! Based on the findings,   up to 10,000 black h...
3 comments
Read more

RETROGRADE AND PROGRADE

Since childhood we have learnt that all the planets go around the Sun. Meaning, the planets and other celestial objects rotate around the Sun in specific directions. But did you know that not all follow the same directions? Some follow the Sun’s rotation while some go in the opposite direction. After observing these motions of certain planets and comets, astronomers termed these rotations as “ Prograde ” and “ Retrograde ”. Before we get into these terms, let’s first understand how the direction of the motion is determined. The direction is determined by the primary object in system that forms the system’s hub. In our case, it is the Sun. So rotation of all the planets and celestial bodies is decided by the Sun’s direction of rotation. Now that we know how the motion is determined, let’s get into the above mentioned terms. Prograde:   It is the motion in the direction of that of the Sun. Meaning, most of the planets and some comets move in the direction of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more