Super-Jupiter Found
The European SpaceAgency’s Gaia spacecraft was surveying the Milky Way and found a planet 12times more massive than Jupiter. This planet, which has been dubbed Gaia-4b, is244 light-years away and orbits a star smaller than our sun.
Gaia also discovered abrown dwarf, which is not quite a planet or a star. The brown dwarf is calledGaia-5b, is 134 light-years from Earth, and also orbits a star smaller than oursun.
The Gaia spacecraft wasrecently retired because it was running out of fuel. Both of the enormouscelestial objects were made official after confirmation from other instruments.These tidbits of information are an intriguing tease about what other data maybe released from the Gaia mission.
According to NASA, thenumber of confirmed exoplanets is over 5,800, with thousands more candidatesunder review. It is estimated that this number is a tiny sampling of planets inspace.
Gais-4b, thesuper-Jupiter, is a relatively cold gas giant that orbits its star once every570 Earth-days. Its star is estimated to be about 2/3 the mass of the sun. Gaia-4bis one of the biggest planets known to circle a small star.
A brown dwarf issometimes referred to as a failed star because it lacks enough mass to generateits own nuclear power. Gaia-5b orbits an even smaller star, about 1/3 of oursun’s mass, in slightly less than an Earth year. Although Gaia-5b didn’t makeit as a star, it’s about 21 times bigger than Jupiter. And Jupiter’s mass isabout equal to 318 Earths.
Gaia-4b is thespacecraft’s first success using the “wobble” technique. Launched in 2013, thespacecraft used a pair of optical telescopes to scan the sky. Because of itsprecision in tracking the motion of stars, it is believed its data may lead tothousands of new discoveries.
The gravity of orbitingplanets can cause host stars to wobble. Planet hunters are adept atinterpreting this data. But confirmation from other telescopes is key, becausethere are other possible reasons for the motion.
