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- Astronomers discovered a massive distant planet orbiting the star Kepler-88.
- The planet is approximately three times the size of our own Jupiter, and around 300 times the mass of Earth.
- At a distance of more than 1,250 light years from Earth, we may never visit it, but scientists can still study it from afar.
- Visit the BGR home page for more stories.
The mighty Jupiter rules our solar system with an iron fist. Well, okay, it doesn’t actually do any of that, but it is considered the “king” of the planets in our system simply because it is the largest. It was once difficult to imagine a planet larger than Jupiter, which has storms that could fit the entire Earth, but exoplanet research has revealed that even Jupiter is a small fry compared to what’s out there.
Now, a new study published in The astronomical diary reveals the existence of a planet in orbit around the distant star Kepler-88 that would embarrass Jupiter. With a mass equivalent to around 300 Earths and three times the mass of Jupiter, it is a true giant and the undisputed king of its own little corner of space.
Using a large amount of data collected at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, a team of astronomers discovered that the two exoplanets orbiting Kepler-88 that scientists already knew are in fact linked by a third party. The new massive exoplanet completes one orbit of its star every four Earth years, and its orbit is significantly different from the orbits of the planets in our home system.
Instead of orbiting in a more or less circular pattern, Kepler-88 d (the name of the new exoplanet, after previous discoveries “b” and “c”) orbits in an elliptical pattern, meaning it travels very far from his star before returning and taking a closer pass, then repeats that same trend over and over again.
“At three times the mass of Jupiter, Kepler-88 d has probably been even more influential in the history of the Kepler-88 system than the so-called King, Kepler-88 c, which is just a mass of Jupiter,” said lead author. . Dr. Lauren Weiss said in a statement. “So perhaps Kepler-88 d is the new supreme monarch of this planetary empire: the empress.”
Understanding the complexities of other planetary systems can help astronomers better understand how they form, while possibly revealing secrets that would apply to our own home system. The space is, well, huge, and no two systems are identical. Learning how massive planets form, how they affect their neighboring planets, and discovering what they are made of could be very important as we search for neighboring star systems that we may one day try to visit.
Kepler-88 probably won’t be the first on the list of systems we’ll try to explore. It is not that the system is not interesting, but at a distance of more than 1,250 light years from Earth, it is obviously not something we can consider with current technology.
Image source: W. M. KECK OBSERVATORY / ADAM MAKARENKO
Mike Wehner has reported on technology and video games for the past decade, covering the latest news and trends in virtual reality, handheld devices, smartphones, and future technology.
Most recently, Mike served as technical editor at The Daily Dot, and has appeared on USA Today, Time.com, and countless other websites and in print. His love for
the reports are second only to his addiction to games.
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