The cosmos are full of surprises, and some of the most spectacular sights can only be seen with the most powerful telescopes. Recently, scientists have observed a unique phenomenon involving four planets orbiting a star 130 million light-years away.
The star, called HD106906, is located in the constellation of Crux, also known as the Southern Cross. This solar system has been classified as a circumbinary system – a system in which two stars orbit one another while other planets orbit around the stars. To their surprise, researchers didn’t observe just two stars but one star and four planets orbiting it.
At the moment, the star HD106906 and its four planets are still visible in the night sky. Scientists were able to detect the planets using the Very Large Telescope located in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The telescope uses infrared light to pick up the faint signals of orbiting planets around a star.
The planets that were found orbiting the star are all massive objects. The largest one, HD106906b, is described as a ‘super-Jupiter’ – a planet approximately 11 times larger than Jupiter. In comparison, the other three planets are considerably smaller, with the third and fourth planets each being about four times the mass of Jupiter.
What makes this discovery so remarkable is that it has taken 130 million light-years for us to observe the planets and the star. To put this into perspective, one light-year is equivalent to the distance light travels in one year, or a whopping 9.46 trillion kilometers! This means that the planets and the star have been travelling together in the cosmos for a very, very long time.
Scientists are eager to learn more about this remarkable star system, including whether or not it contains other objects that have yet to be discovered. By learning more about such objects, it allows us to gain a better understanding of the complexities of our universe and have a better grasp of the mysterious places within it.
