ESO Science Release | VLT | SPHERE | 2016 July 07
[c][imghover=https://cdn.eso.org/images/screen/eso1624g.jpg]https://cdn.eso.org/images/screen/eso1624d.jpg[/imghover]SPHERE observations of the planet HD 131399Ab - Credit: ESO/K. Wagner et al[/c][hr][/hr]A team of astronomers have used the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to image the first planet ever found in a wide orbit inside a triple-star system. The orbit of such a planet had been expected to be unstable, probably resulting in the planet being quickly ejected from the system. But somehow this one survives. This unexpected observation suggests that such systems may actually be more common than previously thought. ...Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine, in the Star Wars saga, was a strange world with two suns in the sky, but astronomers have now found a planet in an even more exotic system, where an observer would either experience constant daylight or enjoy triple sunrises and sunsets each day, depending on the seasons, which last longer than human lifetimes.
This world has been discovered by a team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona, USA, using direct imaging at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. The planet, HD 131399Ab, is unlike any other known world — its orbit around the brightest of the three stars is by far the widest known within a multi-star system. Such orbits are often unstable, because of the complex and changing gravitational attraction from the other two stars in the system, and planets in stable orbits were thought to be very unlikely.
Located about 320 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur), HD 131399Ab is about 16 million years old, making it also one of the youngest exoplanets discovered to date, and one of very few directly imaged planets. With a temperature of around 580 degrees Celsius and an estimated mass of four Jupiter masses, it is also one of the coldest and least massive directly-imaged exoplanets. ...
Although repeated and long-term observations will be needed to precisely determine the planet's trajectory among its host stars, observations and simulations seem to suggest the following scenario: the brightest star is estimated to be eighty percent more massive than the Sun and dubbed HD 131399A, which itself is orbited by the less massive stars, B and C, at about 300 au (one au, or astronomical unit, equals the average distance between the Earth and the Sun). All the while, B and C twirl around each other like a spinning dumbbell, separated by a distance roughly equal to that between the Sun and Saturn (10 au).
In this scenario, planet HD 131399Ab travels around the star A in an orbit with a radius of about 80 au, about twice as large as Pluto’s in the Solar System, and brings the planet to about one third of the separation between star A and the B/C star pair. The authors point out that a range of orbital scenarios is possible, and the verdict on the long-term stability of the system will have to wait for planned follow-up observations that will better constrain the planet’s orbit. ...
Newly-Discovered Planet Has 3 Suns
NASA GSFC | Univ of Arizona | 2016 July 07
Direct Imaging Discovery of a Jovian Exoplanet within a Triple-star System - Kevin Wagner et al
- Science 353(6300):673 (12 Aug 2016) DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf9671
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1607.02525 > 08 Jul 2016
