The b Centauri star system, approximately 325 light-years from the Solar System, contains stars six to 10 times the size of the Sun. A team led by Markus Janson, professor of astronomy at the University of Stockholm, has identified a gas giant planet in this star system with about 11 times the mass of Jupiter, using data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Paranal, Chile.
The discovery, published last week in the journal Nature, shows that planets can also form in star systems much larger than previous research suggests, improving our understanding of the planet formation process. Previous research had shown that it would be very rare to find gas giants orbiting stars with more than 3 solar masses.
Janson and colleagues made observations between March 2019 and April 2021 and found that the celestial body orbits its binary stars at a distance of 560 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, 100 times wider than Jupiter’s current orbit.
Unlike exoplanets found so far, this new gas giant, designated b Cen (AB), was found through direct observation. Scientists say separating the light of the planet from the background is equivalent to capturing a single point of LED light on a soccer ball on a field lit by 500 floodlights.
Janson’s work also provides evidence for how such massive binary star systems could form, which has hitherto been the subject of debate among astronomers.
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