Starship Asterisk*

Brazilian researchers have identified robust signs of the existence of a giant object in the Cygnus constellation orbiting a binary system of a live star and a white dwarf (Credit: Leandro Almeida)

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In the past three decades, almost 4,000 planet-like objects have been discovered orbiting isolated stars outside the Solar System (exoplanets). Beginning in 2011, it was possible to use NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope to observe the first exoplanets in orbit around young binary systems of two live stars with hydrogen still burning in their core.

Brazilian astronomers have now found the first evidence of the existence of an exoplanet orbiting an older or more evolved binary in which one of the two stars is dead. ...

“We succeeded in obtaining pretty solid evidence of the existence of a giant exoplanet with a mass almost 13 times that of Jupiter [the largest planet in the Solar System] in an evolved binary system. This is the first confirmation of an exoplanet in a system of this kind.” ...

Clues followed by the researchers to discover the exoplanet in the evolved binary called KIC 10544976, located in the Cygnus constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere, included variations in eclipse timing (the time taken for each of the two stars to eclipse the other) and orbital period. ...

• Astronomical Journal 157(4):150 (Apr 2019) DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ab0963
• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1903.09637 > 20 Mar 2019