14 DAY TRIAL // A new scientific investigation has revealed that an odd exoplanetary system features members that are drawn to their parent star like moths to candlelight.
The finding could be used to derive more data on how this type of systems develop, and also into how planets forming around a new star get distributed around the cosmic fireball.
This line of study could also have implications for studies of our solar system as well, experts say, as the same processes were most likely at work here as well.
One of the main conclusions in the new investigation is that gas giants tend to gather around their parent stars, which means that, even though they are formed very far away from the cosmic object, they draw closer with time.
The data was derived from studies of a system that was observed using the Kepler space telescope, which managed to detect three planets orbiting a star located some 2,300 light-years away from Earth.
Two of these newly-found planets are gas giants, about the size of Saturn, whereas the third one is smaller, and probably orbiting its star a lot closer than its “peers.”
In fact, measurements indicate that the third exoplanet revolves around its star so close and fast that a year there lasts for about 1.6 Earth days.
The entire planetary system is known as Kepler-9, and astronomers are now considering it to be the key to understanding planetary system formation throughout the Universe.
At this time, all of the three exoplanets in the system could fit inside the orbit of Mercury. “It's safe to say that they did migrate because they ended up in this very special set of orbits,” expert Alycia Weinberger explains.
“The likely candidate for how that migration happened is interaction between these planets and the original disk of material – the gas out of which they formed,” adds the scientist, who is based at the Carnegie Institution of Washington Department of Terrestrial Magnetism.
“It will now take some work to try to figure out exactly how that was likely to happen in this system,” adds Weinberger, who holds an appointment as an astronomer at Carnegie.
“Planets can change locations or migrate due to interactions with the raw materials with which they are built,” Weinberger goes on to say.
Such studies would have been impossible without the Kepler space telescope, which was designed specifically to identify Earth-sized exoplanets around very distant stars.
“Kepler was designed and built to answer fundamental questions,” Weinberger reveals, quoted by Space.
“We want to know what types of planetary systems there are; what is common amongst the various systems; whether there are any special conditions that result in Earth-like planets; whether the whole system of planet formation is robust and common,” she concludes.