The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has discovered a new planet. The observatory’s telescope captured an image of a planet orbiting b Centauri, a two-star system visible to the naked eye. In its article, ESO stated that b Centauri is “the hottest and largest planet-hosting star system ever found”.
The European Southern Observatory said: “This is the hottest and most massive planet-hosting star system ever found, with the planet orbiting 100 times the distance between Jupiter and the Sun. “Some astronomers believed that stars of this size and temperature did not have planets around them.”
Planet discovered orbiting b Centauri
ESO said the b Centauri binary star system, located in the direction of the Centaurus constellation, is about 325 light-years from Earth. Also, noting that it is the most massive system known to orbit a planet with at least eight times the mass of the Sun, the Observatory said, “Until now, no planet has been found around any star more than three times the mass of the Sun.”
Astronomer Markus Janson of Stockholm University, Sweden, wrote in his article published in Nature, “B-type stars are generally thought of as destructive and dangerous environments. For this reason, it is considered that it is very difficult for large planets to form around them. But finding a planet around b Centauri is pretty exciting.”
It has ten times the mass of Jupiter
According to the European Southern Observatory’s statement, the newly discovered planet has a mass ten times greater than Jupiter. This makes it one of the most massive planets ever found. Also, its orbit around the star system is the widest ever discovered, said to be more than 100 times the Jupiter-Sun distance.
https://twitter. com/ESO/status/1468612572131872768
The SPHERE instrument on ESO’s telescope in Chile played a major role in the discovery of the planet. SPHERE has previously imaged many planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. Among them were the first images of two planets around a Sun-like star.
However, this is not the first time this planet has been observed by SPHERE. As part of the research, the team examining archival data of the b Centauri system found that the planet was actually imaged by ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope more than 20 years ago, but was not identified as a planet at the time.
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