The newly discovered exoplanet is about the size of Jupiter but nine times more massive than the gas giant. This is not the only thing that separates the two planets.
AHMEDABAD – A research team from India has discovered an amazing exoplanet: orbiting a star 730 light-years from Earth, the planet called TOI-4603b is about the size of Jupiter in our solar system. But there are several things that distinguish the newly discovered exoplanet from the gas giant orbiting our sun.
First, there’s its density: the exoplanet TOI-4603b has a density nearly nine times that of Jupiter. While the gas giant in our solar system has a density of 1.33 grams per cubic centimeter, TOI-4603b has a density of 14.1 grams per cubic centimeter. For comparison: the density of the Earth is 5.51 grams per cubic centimeter, the density of lead is 11.3 grams per cubic centimeter, and the density of iron is 7.9 grams per cubic centimeter. So it looks as if researchers have detected a particularly dense “cannonball” in space.
The newly discovered exoplanet orbits its star in 7.25 days
The second way in which the newly discovered exoplanet TOI-4603b differs greatly from Jupiter of roughly the same size is in its orbit around its host star. Jupiter takes 11 years, 315 days, and 3 hours to revolve around the sun – exoplanet TOI-4603b only needs 7.25 days.
An exoplanet was discovered by NASA’s TESS space telescope, which was sent into space specifically to search for exoplanets. TESS watches the stars, looking for brief dips in brightness that occur when a planet passes in front of the star. Countless exoplanets have already been discovered using this transit method. The Indian research team took data from TESS and attempted to confirm the planet’s existence using the radial velocity method.
One of the largest and densest of the giant planets
It measures how the gravity of an exoplanet affects a star. If you know the mass of a star, you can determine the mass of an exoplanet. “It is one of the most massive and densely transited giant planets to date,” the research team wrote in the study. on a prepress server ArXiv can access It is for publication in the specialized journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters It was accepted.
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The exoplanet also has an elliptical and eccentric orbit, which indicates that it may anchor itself in its orbit. TOI-4603b is accompanied by an orbiting brown dwarf at a distance of 1.8 AU and may have interacted with it in the past. (unpaid bill)
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