An international research team has discovered an exoplanet orbiting two stars, just like Tatooine from the Star Wars saga. The celestial body, called Toi-1338c or BEBOP-1c, has a mass 65 times that of Earth.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith
Scientists discovered a planet which revolves around two starsjust like the famous one Tatooine From the science fiction epic of star Wars. Unlike the barren orb he was raised on Luke SkywalkerHowever, it is a file gas giant Many tens of times more massive than Earth, and therefore completely inhospitable to life. But the fact remains that it is a very interesting and suggestive finding, even more so because it is the second planet identified in the same system. The first, known as TUI-1338bdiscovered in 2020 thanks to the “planet hunter” via the Exoplanet Survey satellite (he-goat) from NASA and described in the journal Earth and Planetary Astrophysics. The second called Toi-1338cit was only recently determined because Coronavirus disease pandemicwhich in 2020 prevented scientists from fully studying the system using two powerful telescopes installed in the Atacama Desert in Chile (the observatories were closed for six months).
For the discovery of the second planet of the Toi-1338 system, also known as Bebop -1 It was also studied through the project Companion binaries by the planets they orbit, was a large international research team led by scientists from the University of Birmingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy (UK), and collaborated closely with colleagues from San Diego State University’s Department of Astronomy, ‘University of Geneva Astronomy Observatory’, Ohio State University’s Department of Astronomy and several other institutions. The researchers, coordinated by Dr Matthew Standing, now in practice at The Open University after completing his PhD at the British university, identified the planet. Toi-1338c (or Bebop -1 c) across the Radial velocity techniqueunlike transit method Most common.
More have been discovered now 5,000 exoplanets Most of them have been identified thanks to the transit method, based on fluctuations in the illumination of stars caused by the transit of their host planets (which practically small eclipse). However, the first ever exoplanet was identified in 1995, by radial velocity, which analyzes in very simple terms the gravitational effect of the planets on the parent star (or parent stars, as in this case). Discovery Bebop -1 c It was practically random. Dr. Standing and his colleagues were actually trying to determine the mass of Toi-1338b (the planet discovered in 2020) with powerful telescopes set in the Chilean Atacama Desert; They failed the project, but the system’s second planet emerged from the data collected.
An alien planet with huge hot sandstorms has been discovered: orbiting two stars
From the calculations, it was determined that Toi-1338c has mass 65 times higher than Earthequal to about 5 times less than Jupiter, As Dr. Standing explained in a press release. The second planet circularas planets orbiting two stars are called, are used 215 days to complete one orbit around the two stars; This means that one year on this celestial body lasts Like 7 months on earth. To date, only 12 systems with planets orbiting two stars are known, and only two of them are multi-planetary systems, that is, with more than one planet. One of the two is the one that was just discovered. Search detailsRadial velocity detection of a second planet in the TOI-1338/BEBOP-1 ring systemIt was published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Astronomy.
