[ad_1]
Using the Echelle High Resolution Spectrometer Instrument (HIRES) on the Keck I 10m Telescope at W.M. Keck Observatory, astronomers have discovered a giant planet in the Kepler-88 system.
An artistic illustration of the Kepler-88 planetary system. Image credit: Adam Makarenko / W.M. Keck Observatory.
Kepler-88, also known as KOI-142, is a Sun-like star located 1,243 light-years away in the Lyra constellation.
The star houses two previously identified planets, Kepler-88b and c, which have a strange and surprising dynamics called medium motion resonance.
The sub-Neptune-sized Kepler-88b orbits the star in just 11 days, which is almost exactly half the 22-day orbital period of Kepler-88c, a Jupiter-mass planet.
The mechanical nature of their orbits is energy efficient, like a parent pushing a child on a swing. Every two turns Kepler-88b makes around the star, it gets pumped.
Kepler-88c is twenty times more massive than Kepler-88b, so its force produces dramatic changes in the orbital timing of the inner planet.
Called Kepler-88d, the new planet orbits its parent star every 1,403 days, and its orbit is not circular, but elliptical.
At three times the mass of Jupiter, it is the most massive planet in this system.
“At three times the mass of Jupiter, Kepler-88d has probably been even more influential in the history of the Kepler-88 system than Kepler-88c, which is just a mass of Jupiter,” said lead author Dr. Lauren Weiss. , astronomer. at the University of Hawaii Institute of Astronomy.
“Then perhaps Kepler-88d is the new supreme monarch of this planetary empire: the empress.”
“Perhaps these extrasolar sovereign leaders have had as much influence as Jupiter in our Solar System,” the astronomers said.
“Such planets could have promoted the development of rocky planets and directed aquifer comets toward them.”
“We are looking for similar real planets in other planetary systems with small planets.”
The team article was published in the Astronomical magazine.
_____
Lauren M. Weiss et al. 2020. The discovery of the long-period eccentric planet Kepler-88 and the characterization of the system with radial velocities and photodynamic analysis. AJ 159, 242; doi: 10.3847 / 1538-3881 / ab88ca
