Image copyright Uni of Hertfordshire Neil Cook Astronomers have discovered the largest known planetary systems, which, in addition to the central star has a large planet makes a complete revolution around the world almost a million years.
This gas giant is at a distance of one billion kilometers from the star that is 140 times greater than the distance between Pluto and the sun.
So far, we only know a few of these planetary systems.
The exoplanet, designated 2MASS J2126-8140, has a mass of 12-15 Jupiters.
“We were very surprised by the discovery of an object with a relatively small weight so far from the central star” – says Dr. Simon Murphy, of the Australian National University.
“Unlike solar, the system could not have arisen from a huge dust cloud” – says the scientist.
The diameter of the planetary system is almost three times the size of previously detected counterparts.
It is found in the program of observations of young stars and brown dwarfs (protoplanets) in the near galactic surrounded the sun.
The astronomers did not immediately realize that they are watching are not two independent object at the same distance from the Sun – about 100 light years, and the planetary system.
“We believe that they were formed 10-45 million years ago from a gas stream, which was moving in the same direction – says Dr. Murphy. – They were supposed to be in almost complete absence of gravitational perturbations from other stars. Between them is so weak link, that any nearby stars is completely distorted to their mutual orbit “.
In the past eight years, astronomers believed that the object 2MASS J2126-8140 is either a brown dwarf that is unformed until the end of a star or planet, fugitive, not orbiting a star.
However, new data have allowed not only to calculate the orbit of a planet around a distant star from her, but also to clarify the mass of a celestial body.
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