Exoplanetary System Found with 6 Worlds in Orbital Resonance
MrPlow wrote in with a submission, via IRC, for c0lo.
200 light-years away from Earth, there's a K-type main-sequence star named TOI (TESS Object of Interest) 178. When Adrian Leleu, an astrophysicist at the Center for Space and Habitability of the University of Bern, observed it, it appeared to have two planets orbiting it at roughly the same distance. But that turned out to be incorrect. In fact, six exoplanets orbit the smallish star.
And five of those six are locked into an unexpected orbital configuration.
Five of the planets are engaged in a rare rhythmic, dance around the star. In astronomical terms, they're in an unusual orbital resonance, which means their orbits around their star display repeated patterns. That property makes them an intriguing object of study and one that could tell us a lot about how planets form and evolve.
Adrian Leleu leads a team of researchers who studied the unusual phenomenon. [...] In the team's initial observations, it appeared there were only two planets, as five of them move in such a way as to deceive the eye. But further observations showed that something else was happening in the system. Through further observations, we realized that there were not two planets orbiting the star at roughly the same distance from it, but rather multiple planets in a very special configuration," said lead author Leleu.
[...] Systems like this are challenging to understand, but ultimately, they drive researchers to think harder and to observe more fully.
Source: https://www.universetoday.com/149834/exoplanetary-system-found-with-6-worlds-in-orbital-resonance/
Journal Reference:
A. Leleu, Y. Alibert, N. C. Hara, et al. Six transiting planets and a chain of Laplace resonances in TOI-178, Astronomy & Astrophysics (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202039767)
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