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This planet is an absolute chonk.
Scientists have discovered a Jupiter-sized planet that, for the first time on record, is orbiting a significantly smaller and fainter white dwarf star. The planet rapidly orbiting the dwarf, located about 80 light-years away in the northern constellation Draco, has been given the less catchy name of WD 1856 + 534.
An international team of astronomers used a variety of ground and space telescopes to make the discovery, which is proof that intact planets can closely orbit white dwarfs. (A white dwarf star is a star that has run out of nuclear fuel. They are known to be about the size of Earth, which means small, in context, but incredibly dense, and only black holes and neutron stars are denser).
“Never before have we seen evidence of a planet getting this close to a white dwarf and surviving. It’s a pleasant surprise, ”lead author Andrew Vanderburg said in a press release on the findings, published Sept. 16 in the journal Nature.
The researchers located the unique planetary relationship by scanning data from thousands of white dwarf systems. They collided with gold when they noticed that the brightness of the dwarf in question dimmed by roughly half about every day and a half, which they correctly interpreted as something large orbiting in front of it.
The glare from a nearby star turned out to be an obstacle to seeing closer, but with the help of their telescopes and some amateur astronomers, the scientists were able to obtain the data they needed.
“Once the glare was under control, in one night, they got much nicer and much cleaner data than we got with a month of observations from space,” Vanderburg said.
Not only did the research confirm that this planetary relationship may exist, but the researchers are also hopeful that the relationship will be habitable for life.
“I think the most exciting part of this work is what it means so much to habitability in general – can there be hospitable regions in these dead solar systems? – and also our ability to find evidence of that habitability,” Vanderburg said.
