Super-Jupiter Found

The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft was surveying the Milky Way and found a planet 12 times more massive than Jupiter. This planet, which has been dubbed Gaia-4b, is 244 light-years away and orbits a star smaller than our sun.

Gaia also discovered a brown dwarf, which is not quite a planet or a star. The brown dwarf is called Gaia-5b, is 134 light-years from Earth, and also orbits a star smaller than our sun.

The Gaia spacecraft was recently retired because it was running out of fuel. Both of the enormous celestial objects were made official after confirmation from other instruments. These tidbits of information are an intriguing tease about what other data may be released from the Gaia mission.

According to NASA, the number of confirmed exoplanets is over 5,800, with thousands more candidates under review. It is estimated that this number is a tiny sampling of planets in space.

Gais-4b, the super-Jupiter, is a relatively cold gas giant that orbits its star once every 570 Earth-days. Its star is estimated to be about 2/3 the mass of the sun. Gaia-4b is one of the biggest planets known to circle a small star.

A brown dwarf is sometimes referred to as a failed star because it lacks enough mass to generate its own nuclear power. Gaia-5b orbits an even smaller star, about 1/3 of our sun’s mass, in slightly less than an Earth year. Although Gaia-5b didn’t make it as a star, it’s about 21 times bigger than Jupiter. And Jupiter’s mass is about equal to 318 Earths.

Gaia-4b is the spacecraft’s first success using the “wobble” technique. Launched in 2013, the spacecraft used a pair of optical telescopes to scan the sky. Because of its precision in tracking the motion of stars, it is believed its data may lead to thousands of new discoveries.

The gravity of orbiting planets can cause host stars to wobble. Planet hunters are adept at interpreting this data. But confirmation from other telescopes is key, because there are other possible reasons for the motion.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/spacecraft-finds-a-positively-enormous-planet-12-times-jupiter-s-mass/ar-AA1ys8fc?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=2aff526efe7b4e5086a7c5168c21d057&ei=41