Home ยป Unique planetary system with two stars discovered

Unique planetary system with two stars discovered

by alex

An international team of astronomers has discovered a unique planetary system consisting of a K-class star (orange), a Jupiter-sized planet and a white dwarf. The discovery is reported in an article published in the arXiv preprint repository.

The TOI-1259 system, discovered by the TESS space telescope, is 385 light-years from Earth. The parent star has a radius of 0.71 times that of the Sun and is 25 percent more massive than it. Exoplanet TOI-1259Ab is about the size of Jupiter, but its mass is 56 percent larger. Its orbital period is 3.48 days at a distance of 0.04 astronomical units (the average distance from the Sun to the Earth).

What makes the TOI-1259 system unusual is the presence of the white dwarf TOI-1259B, which is 1648 astronomical units (AU) distant from the parent star. It has a radius of 0.013 that of the Sun and a mass of about 0.56 that of the Sun. According to astronomers, the age of the system reaches 4.08 billion years.

Astronomers believe that a white dwarf in the past, when it was still a full-fledged star, could influence the formation and evolution of the planet. Then its mass was 1.59 solar masses, and the distance to the star was 900 AU.

You may also like

Leave a Comment