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Astronomers discover the lowest-mass double neutron star system to date
Confirmed
In Short: Astronomers may have discovered a giant planet in the habitable zone of the hottest star yet, HD 156295.
Astronomers have potentially found a giant planet in the habitable zone of the hottest star yet, HD 156295, marking a milestone in the search for extraterrestrial life.
The discovery was made using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which observed nearly 16,500 Delta Scuti stars.
The team used a detection method called pulsation timing, which measures variations in the star's light to detect potential planets.
The star, HD 156295, is a massive A-type star, nine times brighter than the Sun and about 140 light-years away.
If confirmed, this would be the first known exoplanet in the habitable zone of a massive A-type star.
The potential planet, HD 156295 b, is estimated to be six times larger than Jupiter and orbits its star at a distance approximately four times that of Earth from the Sun.
Despite its intense heat, the star's habitable zone could theoretically allow for the existence of liquid water.
The researchers narrowed down their selection to nine star systems, one of which hosts the exoplanet candidate HD 156295 b.
This discovery is significant as it expands the search for habitable planets to hotter stars, which are less commonly studied.
The star HD 156295 is extremely hot, with a surface temperature of about 7,500 degrees Celsius (13,500 degrees Fahrenheit).
What this adds
The research adds to the understanding of how planets form in the early stages of a star's life.
The astronomers are excited about the potential for further discoveries as they continue to study the HD 156295 system and others like it.
Background
Astronomers have observed two planets forming in the disc around a young star named WISPIT 2, marking a significant step in understanding how planetary systems develop.
What's confirmed
- The new confirmation also resolves a question astronomers have been debating for about 10 years.
- Instead, astronomers had to look for a world carving out a clean pathway directly through its dusty nursery.
What's still developing
- This unusual finding appears to suggest that Chariklo’s ring system may be influenced by a broader range of processes than astronomers anticipated, and also marks a new milestone for Webb as the first stellar occultation predicted, planned, and successfully observed using NASA’s premier space observatory.
- In October 2022, a team of Spanish astronomers leveraged the powerful eye of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine one of the most unexpected discoveries in the cosmos: the rings encircling a curious asteroid in the outer Solar System.
- The unusual object, formally known as 10199 Chariklo, is a class of small celestial objects astronomers call centaurs, whose orbit around the Sun falls between Jupiter and Neptune, and which cross the orbits of at least one of our Solar System’s giant planets.
- On October 18, 2022, one of these observations commenced as astronomers with the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) peered at Chariklo’s rings with the Webb telescope during another stellar occultation.
- Delta Scuti stars are known for their regular pulsations in brightness, making them useful for precise measurements.
- The body is the size of the entire solar system and glows with a brilliant red light billions of light years from Earth The body is the size of the entire solar system and glows with a brilliant red light billions of light years from Earth Astronomers claim to have discovered a new kind of cosmic object, a black hole “star”, which is the size of the entire solar system and glows with a brilliant red light.
- It is thought to have formed 660m years after the big bang, astronomers’ leading theory as to how the universe began.
- If the astronomers are correct, it suggests that scores of other mysterious Little Red Dots, or LRDs, that appear in nearly every deep space image from the James Webb space telescope are also black hole stars.
- Writing in Nature, the astronomers describe how they focused on an extremely bright red spot known as MoM-BH*-1, the reddest object in the telescope’s image archive.
- When the JWST discovered its infamous Little Red Dots (LRD), it generated excitement and curiosity.
- Discovery of dual “little red dots” indicates excess clustering on kilo-parsec scales.
- "The tight relation between black hole mass and galaxy properties, such as stellar velocity dispersion, bulge mass, and stellar mass observed in the local universe implies that SMBHs influence star formation in galaxies through feedback from active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity," they write.