Stars

Planet Discovered with Four Parent Stars

Posted on by conorastr201

4starplanet

An Artist’s Depiction of the System

Binary star systems, like the one featured in the Tatooine system of Star Wars are common in the universe with half of all systems being comprised that way. Ternary system, or systems with three stars, are more rare, and even more rare are quaternion systems.

Planets within these four star systems are also rare, so much so that we have only just now found the second such a planet in the last few weeks. The planet, dubbed 30 Ari, is a “hot Jupiter” that lies exceptionally close to its primary star, orbiting once every three days. However, the planet’s primary star is thought to have had little to do with its creation; it is much more likely that it was thrown into its current orbit from gravitational interactions with the other three much larger, more distant stars.

The article does not go into the composition of the planet, but though they describe it as a “hot Jupiter,” I doubt that it has a composition close to that of Jupiter. Jupiter is full of ices that wouldn’t be able to form. Perhaps it was once a gas giant, but unless it’s magnetic field protects it, my guess is that the gases have been stripped off of it.

The Continual Search for Planets

Posted on by conorastr201

The discovery of planets throughout the ages

The discovery of planets throughout the ages

The discovery of new life-harboring planets has been a hot topic in the last century, but there has always been a limitation: we couldn’t see other planets. However, observational technologies and techniques have progressed to the point where we may be able to find more Earth-like planets within a few short years.

The main problems with discovering so called exo-planets is that they are not luminous, they don’t shine. Because of this, we need to indirectly detect them by observing the stars around which they orbit. As the planets orbit their respective stars, they briefly block some of the light from reaching us; however, that only works when the systems are exactly in-line with ours, which rules out the vast majority of systems.

There is one other way, though, which involves measuring the “wobble” in the star as the planets orbit. As the planet circles, it exerts a gravitational force on the star, causing it to wobble ever so slightly. This has allowed us to find planets that have a radius equivalent to the diameter of our Earth, but hopefully that size will shrink as we continue to develop new and more precise observational technologies.