Astronomers May Have Discovered First Planet to Orbit 3 Stars
upstart writes:
Astronomers may have discovered first planet to orbit 3 stars:
In a distant star system - a mere 1,300 light years away from Earth - UNLV researchers and colleagues may have identified the first known planet to orbit three stars.
[...] Using observations from the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, UNLV astronomers analyzed the three observed dust rings around the three stars, which are critical to forming planets.
But they found a substantial, yet puzzling, gap in the circumtriple disc.
The research team investigated different origins, including the possibility that the gap was created by gravitational torque from the three stars. But after constructing a comprehensive model of GW Ori, they found that the more likely, and fascinating, explanation for the space in the disc is the presence of one or more massive planets, Jupiter-like in nature. Gas giants, according to Jeremy Smallwood, lead author and a recent Ph.D. graduate in astronomy from UNLV, are usually the first planets to form within a star system. Terrestrial planets like Earth and Mars follow.
Journal Reference:
Jeremy L. Smallwood, Rebecca Nealon, Cheng Chen, et al. GW Ori: circumtriple rings and planets, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab2624)
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