May 11, 2021
A giant gas exoplanet in an unusually large orbit has been directly imaged by astronomers via the Young Suns Exoplanet Survey (YSES). It is 20 times as far from its star as Jupiter is from our sun.
Direct image of the giant exoplanet YSES 2b (marked as “b”). The star in the middle of the bright dots has been hidden to block its light. Image via ESO/ SPHERE/ VLT/ Bohn et al./ Astronomie.nl.
Astronomers have discovered many giant planets, similar to Jupiter or Saturn, orbiting other stars. Some of these – called hot Jupiters – are unlike any planets in our solar system, however, circling
A team of astronomers has targeted 70 nearby stars to look for such exoplanets, and have just announced a new one: YSES 2b, a giant planet orbiting a star just 360 light years away.
We ve seen some similar to this before, but in this case, this planet is special. For one thing, it s orbiting a star that will one day be very much like the Sun. For another, it s orbiting at least
16.5 billion kilometers from the star, a whopping 110 times farther from its star as Earth is from the Sun!
That s a very, very long way, and what it s doing that far out is a mystery.
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