Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) | 2018 May 08
An international team of astronomers headed by Dutch researchers from Leiden University has coincidently found a small companion around the young double star CS Cha. The astronomers examined the dust disc of the binary, while they stumbled upon the companion. The researchers suspect that it is a planet in his toddler years that is still growing. The astronomers used the SPHERE instrument on the European Very Large Telescope in Chile. They will soon publish their findings in an article that is accepted by the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.An infrared image of the binary CS Cha with the newly discovered companion in the
dotted circle. It is still unclear whether it is a brown dwarf or a super-Jupiter in his
toddler years. (Mouseover) Special polarization filters make dust discs and exoplanets
visible. The companion seems to have his own dust disc. (Credit: C. Ginski & SPHERE)
The binary star CS Cha and his special companion are located some six hundred light years away from Earth in a star formation area in the southern constellation Chameleon. The double star is just two to three million years young. The researchers wanted to study the star to search for a dust disc and for planets in the making.
During their research on the binary star, the astronomers saw a small dot on the edge of their images. The researchers dived into the telescope archives and discovered the dot, but much fainter, also on 19 year old photographs taken with the Hubble Space Telescope and on 11 year old photographs of the Very Large Telescope. Thanks to the old photographs, the astronomers were able to show that the companion moves with the binary and that they belong together. ...
First Direct Detection of a Polarized Companion Outside of a Resolved Circumbinary Disk Around CS Cha - C. Ginski et al
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1805.02261 > 06 May 2018