Hubble finds a strange exoplanet that looks like the long-awaited “Planet Nine”


Planet nine

The 11-Jupiter-Mass exoplanet A double star called HD 106906B has an improbable orbit around 6 336 light-years and could give a clue to something that could be closer to home: a member of our solar system far from a hypothesis called “Planet Nine”. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure the motion of a giant Jupiter-like planet orbiting far away from its host stars and visible debris disks.

Exoplanet HD 106906B was discovered in 2013 with the Magellan Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert, Chile. However, astronomers knew nothing about the planet’s orbit at the time. This just requires something Hubble Space Telescope Here’s how: Collect very accurate measurements of vaginal bond speed for over 14 years with exceptional accuracy.

The exoplanet is far from its host pair of bright, stellar stars – more than 730 times the Earth’s distance from the Sun. This wide split made it extremely challenging to determine the 15 000-year-long orbit in the short span of Hubble observations. The planet is creeping very slowly along its orbit, pulling the weak gravity of its farthest parent stars.

Hypothesized Planet Nine

The 11-Jupiter-mass exoplanet, known as HD 106906B, has a possible orbit around a double star 6 336 light-years away and could indicate something closer to home: a distant member of our solar system as “Planet Nine” This is the first time that astronomers have been able to measure the motion of a giant Jupiter-like planet orbiting far away from its host stars and visible debris disks. Credit: ESA / Hubble, m. Cornmeaser

The Hubble team behind this new result[1] Surprised to know that there is an extreme orbit in the remote world that surrounds the twin host stars of the Explanet that is very trendy, elongated and external to the dusty debris disk. The debris disk itself is very unusual, perhaps due to the gravity of the rogue planet. The study was led by Meiji Nguyen University of California, Berkeley.

“To illustrate why this is so strange, we can just look at our own solar system and see that all the planets are in approximately the same plane,” Nguyen explained. “If science were to say that, Jupiter is only about 0 degrees like an airplane, it orbits every other planet. So this kind of trend raises all sorts of questions about how the HD 106906B ended up in orbit so far. ”

The prevailing theory for explaining how the exoplanet reached such a distant and strangely oriented orbit is that it formed the Earth very close to its stars, about three times the distance from the Sun. However, pulling the gas inside the system’s disk disrupted the planet’s orbit, forcing its star hosts to move inward. Gravitational forces from the two orbiting stars then kicked it into an eccentric orbit that almost knocked it out of the system and into international space. A star then passed close to the system, stabilizing the exoplanet’s orbit and preventing it from leaving its home system. Candidate passing stars were previously identified using specific distances and speed measurements from the European Space Agency’s Gaia Survey Satellite.

This scenario to illustrate the strange orbit of the HD 106906B is similar in some ways to what the imaginary Planet Nine could end up in the outer reach of our own solar system, beyond the Kuiper belt. Planet Nine could have formed in the inner solar system and was then orbited out by interacting with Jupiter. However, Jupiter is likely to overtake Pla Planet Nine Pluto. Passing stars may have stabilized the orbits of Jupiter and other planets in the inner solar system, pushing them into orbit away.

Paul Klaus, a member of the team, explains, “It looks like our solar system is going back 4.6 billion years to see when our young solar system was dynamically active and everything was amazing and rearranging. We have a time machine to see what happens then. ” University of California, Berkeley.

Sky around HD 106906B

Pictured here is the region around Exoplanet HD 106906B. Located about 6 336 light-years from Earth, this 11-Jupiter-mass planet has an unlikely orbit around the double star 6 336 light-years and could indicate something closer to home: Solar, one of our most distant members System dubbed “Planet Nine.”
This view was created with images from part of Digitized Sky Survey 2. Credit: ESA / Hubble, Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Acknowledgment: David D. Martin

To date, astronomers have only circumstantial evidence for the existence of Planet Nine. They have found a cluster of small celestial bodies outside Neptune Which rotates in an unusual orbit compared to the rest of the solar system. This configuration, some astronomers think, suggests that these objects were assembled by gravitational pull of a huge, invisible planet. The alternative hypothesis is that there is not a giant perturbation, but instead the imbalance is due to the combined gravitational influence of many smaller objects.

Robert de Rosa, a member of the team at the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile, explained, “Despite the lack of discovery of Planet Nine to date, the orbit of the planet can be estimated based on its effect on various So objects of the outer solar system. Who led the study’s analysis. “This suggests that if a planet were to actually be responsible for what we observe in the orbits of trans-Neptune objects, it must have a diagonal orbit relative to the solar system’s plane. This prediction of the orbit of Planet Nine is similar to what we are seeing with the HD 106906B. “

The next use of scientists NASA/ ESA / CSA James Webb Web Space Telescope There are plans to get additional data on HD106906B to better understand the planetary system. Astronomers want to know where and how the Earth was formed and whether it has its own debris system around the Earth, other questions.

De Rosa added, “There are still a lot of open questions about this system. “For example, we do not know exactly where and how the planet was formed. Although we have first measured the speed of orbit, there are still large uncertainties on the various rotation parameters. It is possible that both observers and theorists will study HD 106906 for years, which will reveal many secrets of this remarkable planetary system. ”

For more information on this research, read the new key to Hubble Pin Down Supernatural Exoplanet – “Planet Nine”.

Reference: “First Probe of Orbital Motion for HD 106906B B: Wide-Depletion Exoplanet on Planet Nine as Orbit” Meiji M. Nguyen, Robert J. 10 December 2020, by De Rosa and Paul Klass Astronomical Journal.
DOI: 10.3847 / 1538-3881 / abc012

Notes

[1] The following data from the Hubble Space Telescope observation programs GO-10330 (PI: Ford), GO-14670 (PI: Class), GO-14241 (PI: Apai) and GO-14241 (PI: Apai) were used in this study.

These results have been published in the Astronomical Journal.

More info

The Hubble Space Telescope is an international collaboration project between ESA and NASA.

In this study, M. Guggenheim, R., was part of an international team of astronomers. D. Rosa and p. There is a class.