In the search for extraterrestrial life, NASA launched a Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in the evening of April 18 in Florida, local time.
NASA has discovered an exoplanet with three stars that has a peculiar orbit that has astronomers puzzled.
Exoplanets are planets that exist outside our solar system.
The planet, known as KOI-5Ab, was discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope in 2009, but was “discarded” by scientists when astronomers focused on other, more easily identifiable planets found by space telescopes.
“Planet KOI-5Ab was ignored because it was too complex, and we have thousands of planets that could be observed.” David Ciardi, chief scientist at NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute, said in a statement, “There are easier options than KOI-5Ab, and we’re learning something new every day from the Kepler Space Telescope, so the KOI-5 galaxy has mostly been forgotten.”
KOI-5Ab is about 1,800 light-years from Earth.
However, KOA-5Ab has gained new attention thanks to the efforts of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and other Earth-based telescopes, and researchers have discovered its puzzling orbit.
Because it is so large, KOA-5Ab is much like a gas giant planet, similar to Jupiter or Saturn, but it orbits one of the stars in its star system, KOA-5A, every five days. It is not in line with at least one, and possibly two, of the other two stars.
“We don’t know exactly how many planets exist in the three-star system, but this one is extraordinarily special because it has a skewed orbit.” Ciardi added, “There are still many questions about how and when planets can form in multi-star systems, and how their properties compare to those of planets in single-star systems. By studying this galaxy more closely, perhaps we can gain insight into how the universe makes planets.”
Instead, the stars KOI-5A and KOI-5B orbit each other once every 30 years. A third star, KOI-5C, orbits those two stars once every 400 years, and because the planes are different, the orbits of these four objects become skewed.
It is not clear what caused the skewed orbit, but astronomers “believe that the gravitational force of the second star ‘kicked’ the planet during its development, skewing its orbit and causing it to migrate inward.” The NASA statement added.
The number of three-star galaxies is believed to be about 10 percent of the total number of all stellar galaxies.
The results of this discovery were recently presented at a web conference of the American Astronomical Society.
In July 2019, astronomers discovered an exoplanet Ltt1445Ab surrounded by three suns, all of which were observed as intermediate-late-stage red dwarfs.
In September 2020, researchers discovered that the GW Orion stellar system, located at the edge of Orion, has two stars orbiting each other and a third star orbiting two sibling stars at a distance of about 740 million miles. Inside the rings may be dust, or the beginnings of young exoplanets, which could explain the “gravitational misalignment of galaxies” phenomenon.
In total, NASA has discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets, and as of September 2018, about 50 of them are considered potentially habitable planets. They have the right size and reasonable orbits around their stars, and their surfaces could support the presence of water and, at least in theory, life.
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