Astronomers discovered a planet that orbits at an angle of 90º around a pair of brown dwarfs. This is the first time we have signs of one of these “polar planets” to orbit a pair of these peculiar objects. The surprising discovery was made with the help of Eso’s Very Large Telescope.
In recent years, several planets have been discovered to orbit two stars simultaneously, as well as one of the fictitious planets of the Star Wars science fiction films series.
These planets usually occupy orbits that align approximately with the plan in which their host stars orbit around each other.
We had, however, previous evidence that planets could exist in orbits perpendicular, or polararound binary stars: In theory, these orbits are stable and planetary training discs were detected in polar orbits around pairs of stars.
However, and So far, we had no clear evidence that these polar planets actually exist.
“I am truly enthusiastic because it is involved in the detection of credible indications that point to the existence of this configuration, ”says the astronomer Thomas Baycroftuniversity university at Birmingham, United Kingdom, who led the one published on Wednesday in the magazine Science Advances.
The exoplanet, called 2m1510 (AB) B, orbits a binary of brown dwarfs Youth – Objects Greater than giant giant planetsbut too small to be stars themselves.
The two nuts eclipse each other when observed from the earth, constituting what astronomers call a eclipsant binary.
This system It’s quite rare: In addition to being just the second pair of eclipsing nuts known to date, we now find that the first exoplanet never found in a trajectory perpendicular to the orbit of its two host stars.
“A planet in orbit not only a binary, but of a binary of brown dwarfs, and in a polar orbit, It’s really amazing“Says the co -author Amaury Triaudprofessor at the University of Birmingham.
Legacy of the Desci/D Survey. LANG (Perimeter Institute)
This image, obtained in the visible, shows 2m1510 AB, a pair of brown dwarfs in orbit each other. The two nuts, A and B dwarfs, appear as if they were a single source, but we know that they are two objects that periodically eclipse each other. When monitoring their orbits, astronomers found disturbances that can only be explained by the gravitational attraction of an exoplanet that moves around the two brown dwarfs in a perpendicular orbit. This system contains a third brown dwarf, 2m1510 C, but it is too far away to be responsible for these disturbances.
The team found this planet when it refined the orbital and physical parameters of the two brown dwarfs from observations carried out with the UVES (Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph) instrument mounted on the ESO VLT at the Panal Observatory in Chile.
This pair of nuts, known as 2M1510was first detected in 2018 by Triaud and other researchers, who used Spech (Search for Habitable Planets Eclipsing Ultra-Cool Stars), another Panal installation.
Astronomers observed the orbital trajectory of the two stars of 2m1510 to be pushed and pulledwhich led them to infer the existence of an exoplanet with this strange orbital angle.
“We review all the possible scenarios and The only consistent with the data obtained corresponds to the existence of a planet in a polar orbit around this binary“Says Baycroft
“This discovery was reraally unexpectedsince our observations were not collected to look for such a planet or orbital configuration. As such, it was in fact a big surprise, ”concludes Triaud.
“I think this shows us, both us astronomers and the general public, what it is possible to find in the fascinating universe we live in,” he concludes.
