Thursday, July 7, 2016

This planet with three suns should not exist – Gizmodo in Spanish

Interpretation of an artist on the planet HD 131399. system image: ESO / L. Calçada.

A 320 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus years, there is one of the strangest planets that mankind has discovered. Has four times the mass of Jupiter and twice more distant than Pluto … around one of its three Suns orbit.

http://es.gizmodo.com/20-anos- an outdoor …

Using a new instrument that is in the “Very Large Telescope” the European Southern Observatory, a team of astronomers has discovered a planet in an exotic three-star system, and is the second time that humanity discovered an exoplanet as well. But the big difference is that the former had discovered its orbit very close to one of its stars and away from the other two, while the new planet HD 131399Ab is influenced by the severity of the three Suns. Until now, astronomers were not sure that a planet could survive this way.

“I dare say that this is the oddest orbit we have ever found in an extrasolar planet,” he told Gizmodo Kevin Wagner, an astronomer at the University of Arizona and lead author of the study on the discovery published in Science . “So far we do not know of another planet in conditions how are you”.

Although astronomers so far have found thousands of exoplanets by transit photometry only been able to obtain direct images of a handful of these worlds . And you can get an idea of ​​what it means to obtain direct images of these planets to imagine that it is trying to see a dragonfly from a lighthouse almost 2,000 kilometers away; It is not easy to do. The only planets we have been able to obtain images are much larger than Jupiter and are located in an orbit with enough distance to the brightness of its parent star is less severe.

“We know of another planet in conditions how are you. “

But as the instruments have progressed, so has our ability to see a greater diversity of exoplanets, including some in systems of several stars, representing an additional challenge to discover by having multiple light sources.

in 2014 the “Very Large Telescope” ESO was equipped with a new tool called SPHERE, which features an optical system adapted to cancel the distortion caused by the atmosphere land plus an instrument to block starlight, called a coronagraph. The SPHERE is now one of the most powerful in the world to obtain direct images that have planet hunters tools, and proved to be able to discover this exoplanet three stars during his first campaign of observations.

the planet makes its orbit around a young star of type “a” (called HD131399A), and it takes about 550 earth years performing a full rotation. Beyond its orbit you are a Sun-like star and a dwarf “K” (called “B” and “C”), which rotate on each other while in turn revolve around the star “A” .

“the planet is about one-third of distance [between a and pair B / C],” Wagner said. “And the three stars exert the effect of gravity on the planet, which means it has a quite irregular orbit that is constantly changing and evolving.”

It remains to be seen whether the effect of gravity three stars will end up destroying the planet. In cosmic terms, the planet HD 131399Ab is still an infant, with only about 13 million years after birth. But turn that has survived so long suggests that there may be many more worlds like this. Some might even be small, rocky and inhabitable

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image HD 131399Ab planet in triple star system HD 131399, captured by ESO SPHERE system.

” We believed that [systems stellar triple] are not common, or at least not with the conditions presented by this, so until now had not looked at the cosmo “Wagner said. Studying such systems will help us understand more about the conditions under which planets can form.

Wagner will continue to study the orbit of HD 131399Ab to determine whether the planet will be stable long term. But while their fate, and generally the fate of the three planets star in the universe, remains unknown, nothing will stop humanity and astronomers to imagine what life might be like in a world like this.

“I like to imagine what it will be able to be on this planet when opposed to the three stars,” says Wagner. “It will be almost like seeing three suns on the horizon, and as the planet continues to orbit the stars will separate to a point where the setting of the stars coincide with the start of the other.”

Basically, if we were there, we would have two seasons: one with three sunrises and three sunsets every day, and another with perpetual light, in which a star (or two) will always appear on the horizon to replace it is . putting

Now, if that does not make you feel you want to go into a spaceship and explore the universe, really do not want to know

Video.: Mandy Mandelstein


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