22-04-2025
Scientists discover first 'polar planet' orbiting two stars in ‘surprise' find
The planet orbits two stars at once, like the fictional Star Wars world Tatooine.
Astronomers have found a planet that orbits around a rare pair of peculiar stars in what has been dubbed a "surprising" discovery. This discovery is the first strong evidence of a 'polar planet' orbiting a pair of stars.
Scientists used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to make this exciting discovery. Several planets orbiting two stars at once have been discovered in the past years, but none that orbited their stars in this interesting way had been found.
Star Wars fans may recognise that phenomenon from the fictional planet Tatooine in the film franchise. And Science Daily explains that these odd planets typically occupy orbits that roughly align with the angle in which their host stars orbit each other.
However, this particular 'polar planet' orbits at a 90 degree angle around its stars.
Previous theories assumed that these orbits would be stable, and hints of these planets existing had been found, but there was a lack of clear evidence that these polar planets existed until now.
Thomas Baycroft, a PhD student at the University of Birmingham, who led the study published in Science Advances, said: "I am particularly excited to be involved in detecting credible evidence that this configuration exists."
The exoplanet, named 2M1510 (AB) b, orbits a pair of young brown dwarf stars, which are bigger than gas-giant planets but too small to be considered proper stars.
The two brown dwarfs produce eclipses of one another as seen from Earth, in a phenomenon that astronomers call an 'eclipsing binary'.
This star system is incredibly rare, and it is only the second pair of eclipsing brown dwarfs known to date. The system also contains the first exoplanet ever found on a path at right angles to the orbit of its two host stars.
"A planet orbiting not just a binary, but a binary brown dwarf, as well as being on a polar orbit is rather incredible and exciting," says co-author Amaury Triaud, a professor at the University of Birmingham.
The planet was found while the team was refining the orbital and physical parameters of the two brown dwarfs - but it wasn't a discovery they were expecting.
Triaud added: "The discovery was serendipitous, in the sense that our observations were not collected to seek such a planet, or orbital configuration. As such, it is a big surprise."
Scientists collected observations with the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory, Chile.
This pair of brown dwarfs, known as 2M1510, were first detected in 2018 by the research's co-author Triaud.
The astronomers noticed that the orbital path of the two stars in 2M1510 were being pushed and pulled in unusual ways, which led to the discovery of this exoplanet with its strange orbital angle.
Baycroft explained that it became clear that the only explanation for this push-pull effect was that there was a planet orbiting at a 90 degree angle to the stars.
"Overall, I think this shows to us astronomers, but also to the public at large, what is possible in the fascinating Universe we inhabit", says Triaud.
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