NASA has discovered a three-star exoplanet, one with a strange orbit that has left astronomers bewildered.
The planet, known as KOI-5Ab, was discovered in 2009 by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, but was “abandoned” by scientists because the Space Telescope had easier-to-identify candidates.
“The KOI-5Ab was abandoned because it was complicated and we had thousands of candidates,” David Ciardi, chief scientist at NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute, said in a statement. “There were simpler options than KOI-5Ab and every day we learned something new from Kepler, so KOI-5 was mostly forgotten.”
KOI-5Ab is located approximately 1,800 light-years from Earth. A light year, which measures the distance to space, is about 6 trillion miles.
However, thanks to NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and other Earth-based telescopes, KOA-5Ab has been given new life, with researchers discovering its baffling orbit.
Due to its size, KOA-5Ab is probably a gas giant, similar to Jupiter or Saturn, but surrounds a star in its stellar system, KOA-5A, once every five days. It is also out of line with at least one of the other two stars and possibly both.
“We don’t know many planets that exist in triple star systems and this one is very special because its orbit is skewed,” Ciardi added. “We still have a lot of questions about how and when planets can form in multi-star systems and how their properties are compared to planets in single-star systems. By studying this system in more detail, we may be able to get an idea of how the universe makes planets ”.
Instead, KOI-5A orbits KOI-5B with each other, once every 30 years. KOI-5C orbits the two once every 400 years, leaving the four celestial objects in a biased orbit as a result of different planes.
It is unclear what caused the biased orbit, although “they believe that the second star gravitationally hit the planet during its development, bending its orbit and causing it to migrate inward,” the statement said. NASA. Three-star systems are believed to be approximately 10 percent of all star systems.
The findings were recently presented at a virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Researchers have discovered other three-star planets in recent memory. In July 2019, the exoplanet LTT 1445Ab was found to orbit around one of the three suns, all described as mid-to-late-life red dwarfs.
In September 2020, researchers discovered that the star system GW Orionis, located on the edge of the constellation Orion, has two stars orbiting each other and the third orbiting the stars. two brothers at a distance of about 740 million miles. Inside the rings could be dust, or the beginnings of a young exoplanet, which could explain the misalignment of the gravitational pull of the system.
NASA has discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets in total, about 50 of which were thought to be potentially habitable by September 2018. They have the right size and orbit of their star to support surface water and, at least theoretically, give life support.