Given the huge number of solar systems, a huge diversity of planetary configurations can be expected. But what astronomers from the European Space Agency (ESA) found in a star with the ID HD110067 really surprised them.
Six planets in perfect view
Six planets have now been identified in the system, which is about a hundred light-years away. The special thing about it is that the celestial bodies have placed themselves in orbits around their parent star, ensuring that they all move around the star in a precisely synchronized dance.
In our solar system, the planets move in somewhat random orbits. Over time, they take on all possible constellations. Not so with the HD110067. The time each planet takes to orbit around the system’s sun is precisely related to the orbits of neighboring planets, a rare property in space, according to researchers in the journal. nature To report.
“It’s like looking at a fossil,” said Raphael Luke, co-author of the study and an astronomer at the University of Chicago. “The orbits of the planets are the same today as they were a billion years ago.” This is also something special. Because other perfectly coordinated orbits usually only exist for a limited time with fewer planets.
Hassle free times
The solar system is usually fairly self-contained because the distances between stars are so large. However, it occurs over very long timescales, for example, stray massive objects passing nearby and disrupting the gravitational influence between the planets and their star enough to cause disturbances in the harmony over subsequent timescales.
The solar system in the new study is located in the constellation Coma Berenice (Berenice’s Hair), and its star’s radius and mass are about 80 percent of the Sun’s mass. The radii of the planets range from 1.94 to 2.85 times the size of Earth, so they are between the size of Earth and Neptune. The researchers examined the system using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the European Space Agency’s Exoplanet Characterization Satellite (KHOVS).
- A hundred light-years away, the system HD110067 contains six planets
- The planets move around their star in a synchronized dance
- The orbits in the HD110067 system have remained unchanged for billions of years
- Rarely accurate ratios of orbital times in the HD110067 system
- Disturbances in planetary systems can be caused by massive objects
- The Coma Berenice constellation houses the solar system under study
- Sizes of the planets between Earth and Neptune, data from TESS and Cheops were used
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