Former King of Kepler-88 Planetary System
University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy
W.M. Keck Observatory | 2020 Apr 29
Our solar system has a king. The planet Jupiter, named for the most powerful god in the Greek pantheon, has bossed around the other planets through its gravitational influence. With twice the mass of Saturn, and 300 times that of Earth, Jupiter's slightest movement is felt by all the other planets. Jupiter is thought to be responsible for the small size of Mars, the presence of the asteroid belt, and a cascade of comets that delivered water to young Earth.
Do other planetary systems have gravitational gods like Jupiter?
A team of astronomers led by the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (UH IfA) has discovered a planet three times the mass of Jupiter in a distant planetary system.
The discovery is based on six years of data taken at W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaiʻi. Using the High-Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) instrument on the 10-meter Keck I telescope, the team confirmed that the planet, named Kepler-88 d, orbits its star every four years, and its orbit is not circular, but elliptical. At three times the mass of Jupiter, Kepler-88 d is the most massive planet in this system.
The system, Kepler-88, was already famous among astronomers for two planets that orbit much closer to the star, Kepler-88 b and c (planets are typically named alphabetically in the order of their discovery). ...
The Discovery of the Long-Period, Eccentric Planet Kepler-88 d and System
Characterization with Radial Velocities and Photodynamical Analysis ~ Lauren M. Weiss et al
- Astronomical Journal 159(5):242 (2020 May) DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ab88ca
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1909.02427 > 05 Sep 2019 (v1), 29 Apr 2020 (v3)