NASA’s TESS planet hunter has discovered a giant, bizarre exoplanet orbiting a star less than a fifth the age of Earth.
According to Sci-News, this new planet, called TOI-201b, is among the 5% of planets with the youngest mother star measured by astronomers, so this is a great opportunity to find out if a system is the way stars look like our solar system. at the “early” stage.
According to Dr Melissa Hobsin of the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics at the University of Pontificia Catolica de Chile, the new planet is a “hot Jupiter” with the same radius but only 0.42 times heavier than Jupiter, perhaps. be because it is a young planet gas, still in its “bubble” phase. The data reveals that this giant object is still “newborn”, still cooling down after its formation.
Unlike the “hot Jupiter” which rotates extremely close to its parent, the hot Jupiter does not undergo too much irradiation and does not lose any trace of the evolution of the tides, thus potentially containing valuable parameters. Scientists believe that, like Jupiter in the solar system, these giant planets must originate from a position very far from their mother star and then slowly progress to the center, having a strong process of forming planets of the same system.
TOI-201 – the parent star of TOI-201b – is estimated to be only 870 million years old, less than 1/5 the age of the Earth, about 32% larger and heavier than the Sun, which means the planet orbiting it is a few older.
After preliminary data from TESS, the team used three additional spectrophotometers, FEROS, HARPS, CORALIE from La Silla Observatory (located in Chile) and a series of four Minerva-Australis telescopes (located in Australia) to confirm the reception and learn more about the planet TOI-201b with its mother star.
Following the publication of the discoveries prepared for publication in the Astronomical Journal, the authors will continue to delve into the world 372 light years away, hoping to find clues that explain the crime of the city of our own system. solar.
