Rare Planet with Three Suns has a Super Weird Orbit
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956_:
Rare Planet With Three Suns Has A Super Weird Orbit:
Ciardi, along with his colleagues, have now gazed upon KOI-5Ab with new eyes, namely NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and several ground-based telescopes, including the Keck Observatory in Hawai'i. The team was finally able to confirm KOI-5Ab as a bona fide exoplanet, and in the process uncover some fascinating-if not completely perplexing-aspects about its stellar environment. Ciardi, a research astronomer at Caltech, recently presented his team's findings at a virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Confirmation of KOI-5Ab was done with the tried-and true transit method, in which an orbiting planet passes in front of its star from our perspective, causing a brief dimming. The confirmation was further validated by another technique, the wobble method, in which the slight gravitational tug of an orbiting planet causes a detectable lurch in its host star. TESS was used for the transit method, while Keck was used to detect the wobble. The combined data allowed the researchers to rule out other possibilities, such as a fourth star.
KOI-5Ab is likely a gas giant, similar to Neptune in terms of its size. It resides within a triple-star system, and while its orbit is a bit strange, it's[sic] overall environment is less chaotic than it may sound.
Despite having three stellar companions, KOI-5Ab orbits a single star, KOI-5A, once every five days. This host star is caught in a mutual orbit with a nearby star called KOI-5B, and the two twirl around each other once every 30 years. A more distant star, KOI-5C orbits this pair once every 400 years.
[...] The issue has to do with KOI-5Ab's orbital alignment relative to KOI-5B. The two objects don't share the same orbital plane, which is an unexpected result-one that calls conventional planetary formation theories into question, such as how such objects are believed to form from a single protostellar disk.
Liu Cixin says don't transmit to them!
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