July 8: Astronomers have announced the discovery of a planet locked in a triple-star system where they say an observer would experience either constant daylight or triple sunsets and sunrises each day, depending on its orbital features.
The planet orbits a star named HD131399A, which is part of a three-star system located in the direction of the constellation Centaurus, about 320 light years from the solar system.
The findings, published in the US journal Science today, suggest the planet has a mass four times that of Jupiter and a temperature of about 580°C.
It’s a surprising discovery because planetary orbits around a triple-star system are predicted to be unstable owing to the changing gravitational tugs of the three stars. Such planets are thought likely to be ejected quickly after they have formed.
“We have directly imaged the planet through its thermal emissions – this is somewhat similar to seeing people through their infrared emissions,” Kevin Wagner, an astronomer at the University of Arizona and team member, told The Telegraph over the phone.
Over the past two decades, scientists have catalogued over 3,400 planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, but almost all have been detected indirectly through subtle changes in the light emissions from their parent stars as they move in front of them.
Wagner and his colleagues from France and Germany used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in the Atacama desert in northern Chile to discover the new planet, HD131399Ab. It orbits star A and is gravitationally locked with two other stars, B and C.
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