Latest news with #super-Neptune
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Unfortunate Exoplanet Being Dragged by Star at Unfathomable Speed
A tiny star is making big moves — whether its accomplice likes it or not. Astronomers have spotted a star just a fraction the mass of the Sun crashing through the Milky Way at an unbelievable pace. And astonishingly, it's managed to drag its exoplanet along, as the poor world hangs on for dear life. As detailed in a new study published in The Astronomical Journal, the host star is absolutely hauling it at at least 1.2 million miles per hour, making it the fastest-moving exoplanet system discovered to date, according to NASA. "We think this is a so-called super-Neptune world orbiting a low-mass star at a distance that would lie between the orbits of Venus and Earth if it were in our solar system," study lead author Sean Terry, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a NASA statement. "If so, it will be the first planet ever found orbiting a hypervelocity star." Of course, speed is relative. To us, the Sun is stationary. But with reference to the Milky Way, our solar system is orbiting around the galactic center at an average velocity of 450,000 miles per hour. And the Earth, relative to the Sun, moves at around 67,000 miles per hour. Our perspective of the hyperspeed star, then, may be a little skewed. In reality, it could be traveling much faster than it appears, if it's moving towards or away from our planet. That opens the possibility that the star is actually whipping around at 1.3 million miles per hour — fast enough to break free from the Milky Way, making it a potential "rogue star" doomed to roam the intergalactic void. Spotting the star and its exoplanet is a remarkable discovery. Because they have no luminosity of their own, exoplanets are often outshined by stars, if not entirely lost to the lightless realm of space. Both objects were first spotted back in 2011 using microlensing, a technique that searches for distortions of light caused by the gravity of nearby objects. If the conditions are right, even the mass of just a star or a planet could be enough to bend light like a natural lens, providing a better view of what lies behind it. At the time, the findings were enough to determine the mass ratio between the two objects, with one being 2,300 times heavier than the other. But there wasn't enough data to rule out the possibility that the pair comprised a rogue planet — that is, one that's broken from from its star system — four times the mass of Jupiter, and its moon. But when looking at data collected in 2021, astronomers found a candidate system that strongly resembled the one detected a decade ago, located in a star-dense region of the Milky Way roughly 24,000 light years away. The fact that they could even see it in the first place strongly suggests that they're on the trail of an escaping tiny star, not a huge planet. As promising as the findings are so far, there's still some additional detective work needed to put this case to bed. "To be certain the newly identified star is part of the system that caused the 2011 signal, we'd like to look again in another year and see if it moves the right amount and in the right direction to confirm it came from the point where we detected the signal," coauthor David Bennett, a senior research scientist at NASA Goddard, said in the statement. More on space: Don't Panic, But the Chances of That City Killer Asteroid Hitting Earth Just Almost Doubled
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA May Have Found The Fastest Planetary System We've Ever Seen
In the Milky Way's central bulge, about 24,000 light-years from Earth, a peculiar pair of objects appears to be hurtling through space at breakneck speed. Evidence suggests these objects are a high-velocity star and its accompanying exoplanet, a new study reports. If that's confirmed, it would set a new record as the fastest-moving exoplanet system known to science. Stars are on the move throughout the Milky Way, typically at a few hundred thousand miles per hour. Our Solar System's average velocity through the galaxy's Orion Arm is 450,000 miles per hour, or 200 kilometers per second. These two objects are careening twice as fast, at a speed of at least 1.2 million miles per hour (540 kilometers per second). "We think this is a so-called super-Neptune world orbiting a low-mass star at a distance that would lie between the orbits of Venus and Earth if it were in our solar system," says astronomer Sean Terry from the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "If so, it will be the first planet ever found orbiting a hypervelocity star." The two objects were initially found in 2011, as researchers hunted exoplanets in data from Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA), a project based at the University of Canterbury Mount John Observatory in New Zealand. Gravitational microlensing is a phenomenon that occurs when a massive celestial object is near the line of sight that runs between a distant observer on one side and a distant star on the other. Since mass warps spacetime, the star's light curves as it passes through the object's distorted spacetime on its way to the observer. If all three points align closely enough, the bent spacetime around the middle object acts as a lens for the observer, amplifying starlight. Researchers studying MOA data in 2011 determined the objects' relative mass – one is 2,300 times more massive than the other – but the actual mass of both remained unclear. "Determining the mass ratio is easy," says astronomer David Bennett from the University of Maryland and NASA Goddard, who worked on the 2011 and 2025 studies. "It's much more difficult to calculate their actual masses." Finding an object's actual mass requires knowing its distance, in a similar way to how moving a magnifying glass closer and farther distorts the apparent size of objects without altering the differences between them. Bennett and his colleagues in 2011 floated two scenarios for the pair of objects: Either it's a star and a planet, with the star slightly less massive than our sun and the planet 29 times more massive than Earth, or it's a less distant rogue super- Jupiter towing a moon smaller than Earth. For the new study, researchers sought to find out what these two are and what they're up to more than a decade later – using data from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite. They settled on a star system roughly 24,000 light-years away from Earth as the likeliest candidate. It's in the Milky Way's bright, densely populated central bulge of stars, the galactic downtown to our distant suburban perch. Based on its distance from the 2011 signal, the team calculated how fast the star is moving, finding its speed is more than twice that of our sun. That only accounts for its two-dimensional motion as seen from Earth, though. It could also be moving toward or away from us, which is harder to detect from our vantage, yet would mean it's moving even faster. That suggests this star might be fast enough to surpass the Milky Way's escape velocity, thought to be around 550 to 600 kilometers per second. If so, then it's headed for intergalactic space – although not for millions of years, since the Milky Way is huge and it's still pretty much right in the middle. While this solar system fits the profile of the 2011 objects, only time will tell. "To be certain the newly identified star is part of the system that caused the 2011 signal, we'd like to look again in another year and see if it moves the right amount and in the right direction," Bennett says. If the star just remains stationary, then we'll know it is not contributing to the signal-causing system. "That would mean the rogue planet and exomoon model is favored," explains astrophysicist Aparna Bhattacharya from the University of Maryland and NASA Goddard. The study was published in The Astronomical Journal. Astronomers Reveal Our Best Glimpse Yet of Planets Being Born A Supermassive Black Hole Is on a Collision Course With The Milky Way Astronomers Discover Nearby Alien World That May Sustain Life
Yahoo
16-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Unfortunate Exoplanet Being Dragged by Star at Unfathomable Speed
A tiny star is making big moves — whether its accomplice likes it or not. Astronomers have spotted a star just a fraction the mass of the Sun crashing through the Milky Way at an unbelievable pace. And astonishingly, it's managed to drag its exoplanet along, as the poor world hangs on for dear life. As detailed in a new study published in The Astronomical Journal, the host star is absolutely hauling it at at least 1.2 million miles per hour, making it the fastest-moving exoplanet system discovered to date, according to NASA. "We think this is a so-called super-Neptune world orbiting a low-mass star at a distance that would lie between the orbits of Venus and Earth if it were in our solar system," study lead author Sean Terry, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a NASA statement. "If so, it will be the first planet ever found orbiting a hypervelocity star." Of course, speed is relative. To us, the Sun is stationary. But with reference to the Milky Way, our solar system is orbiting around the galactic center at an average velocity of 450,000 miles per hour. And the Earth, relative to the Sun, moves at around 67,000 miles per hour. Our perspective of the hyperspeed star, then, may be a little skewed. In reality, it could be traveling much faster than it appears, if it's moving towards or away from our planet. That opens the possibility that the star is actually whipping around at 1.3 million miles per hour — fast enough to break free from the Milky Way, making it a potential "rogue star" doomed to roam the intergalactic void. Spotting the star and its exoplanet is a remarkable discovery. Because they have no luminosity of their own, exoplanets are often outshined by stars, if not entirely lost to the lightless realm of space. Both objects were first spotted back in 2011 using microlensing, a technique that searches for distortions of light caused by the gravity of nearby objects. If the conditions are right, even the mass of just a star or a planet could be enough to bend light like a natural lens, providing a better view of what lies behind it. At the time, the findings were enough to determine the mass ratio between the two objects, with one being 2,300 times heavier than the other. But there wasn't enough data to rule out the possibility that the pair comprised a rogue planet — that is, one that's broken from from its star system — four times the mass of Jupiter, and its moon. But when looking at data collected in 2021, astronomers found a candidate system that strongly resembled the one detected a decade ago, located in a star-dense region of the Milky Way roughly 24,000 light years away. The fact that they could even see it in the first place strongly suggests that they're on the trail of an escaping tiny star, not a huge planet. As promising as the findings are so far, there's still some additional detective work needed to put this case to bed. "To be certain the newly identified star is part of the system that caused the 2011 signal, we'd like to look again in another year and see if it moves the right amount and in the right direction to confirm it came from the point where we detected the signal," coauthor David Bennett, a senior research scientist at NASA Goddard, said in the statement. More on space: Don't Panic, But the Chances of That City Killer Asteroid Hitting Earth Just Almost Doubled
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Fastest exoplanet ever is dragged through space at 1.2 million mph by hypervelocity star
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's super Neptune! But this Superman-mimicking planet is not blasting through space on its own. It is being dragged along by its parent star. NASA scientists have discovered what they suspect is the hypervelocity star racing through space with a Neptune-like planet in tow. The system appears to be moving at an incredible speed of 1.2 million miles per hour (1.9 million kilometers per hour). If the discovery is confirmed, this will be the fastest extrasolar planet, "exoplanet," system ever seen. "We think this is a so-called super-Neptune world orbiting a low-mass star at a distance that would lie between the orbits of Venus and Earth if it were in our solar system," said team leader Sean Terry, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "If so, it will be the first planet ever found orbiting a hypervelocity star." The star and the planet it drags along with it were first hinted at in data collected way back in 2011 thanks to a chance alignment and a phenomenon first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915 in his magnum opus theory, general relativity. Gravitational lensing becomes useful to planet-hunters when planets pass background stars not associated with them. The way these planets warp space causes a tiny shift in the stars' position when seen from Earth. This effect, called "microlensing," can therefore be used to detect otherwise dark planets way beyond the limits of the solar system that are effectively invisible using traditional light-based astronomy. In this case, the team detected a microlensing signal that indicated two cosmic objects. They determined one of these lensing bodies has a mass around 2,300 times greater than its companion, but weren't able to determine the exact masses of the objects because they were simply too far away."Determining the mass ratio is easy," team member David Bennett, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA Goddard, said. "It's much more difficult to calculate their actual masses."Bennett was part of the team behind the 2011 discovery that suspected that the lensing bodies were a star with a mass around one-fifth of the sun's mass and a planet 29 times as massive as Earth. Alternatively, the first object could be a closer "rogue planet" with no parent star and a mass around 4 times that of Jupiter. That would have made the second lensing body a moon associated with this planet. To end this confusion, Bennett joined this new team, and they began scouring data collected by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the star-tracking spacecraft Gaia. The team reasoned that if this pair of lensing bodies were indeed a rogue planet and its trailing moon, then without the aid of lensed background starlight, they would be invisible. However, if this is a star dragging along a super Neptune, then, though the planet would be too faint to see, the light from the star should make it identifiable. This search seems to have been successful. The researchers spotted a strong suspect star located around 24,000 light-years from Earth. That places the star right by the central bulge of the Milky Way, where stellar bodies are densely packed. The team then looked at the star's position in 2011 and compared it to its location in 2021. The change in location over 10 years revealed the system's high speed. Though the scientists have estimated this star is dragging its exoplanet along at 1.2 million mph, what they have examined thus far represents its motions in just two star system could also be moving towards or away from Earth. If it is, this could push its speed up to over 1.3 million mph (600 kilometers per second).This is significant because that speed exceeds the escape velocity of the Milky Way. That means this hypervelocity star and its planet could be destined to escape the Milky Way and go intergalactic, though this process would take millions of years. Related Stories: — Hubble telescope sees an angry star and an evaporating planet — James Webb Space Telescope suggests this exoplanet is our 'best bet' at finding an alien ocean — 12 out-of-this-world exoplanet discoveries in 2023 The team will now attempt to conclusively determine if the lensing body spotted in 2011 is indeed this suspect star. "If high-resolution observations show that the star just stays in the same position, then we can tell for sure that it is not part of the system that caused the signal," team member and University of Maryland researcher Aparna Bhattacharya said. "That would mean the rogue planet and exomoon model is favored." Moving beyond this system, this team and other scientists will now attempt to discover more planets associated with hypervelocity stars. This search will get a major boost when the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches in May 2027. Roman could also help get to the bottom of what launches some stars with such incredible speeds. "In this case, we used MOA for its broad field of view and then followed up with Keck and Gaia for their sharper resolution, but thanks to Roman's powerful view and planned survey strategy, we won't need to rely on additional telescopes," Terry said. "Roman will do it all." The team's research was published on Tuesday (Feb. 10) in The Astronomical Journal.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Mystery star could belong to the fastest planetary system ever seen
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists may have spotted a tiny star, possibly with an alien world in tow, shooting through the Milky Way around 500 times faster than a speeding bullet. This would make this the fastest planetary system ever seen. However, there is still uncertainty about the true nature of the speeding object and its companion. In 2011, researchers indirectly spotted a pair of mysterious objects in the Milky Way, via a phenomenon known as "microlensing" — a low-level form of gravitational lensing where light gets "bent" as it passes through space-time that is distorted by large objects. Although the team did not directly see or measure the pair, the gravitational anomalies revealed the larger object was around 2,300 times heavier than the smaller object. One of the leading theories to explain this was that the pair consisted of a small star being orbited by a sizable exoplanet located somewhere in the "galactic bulge" of stars near the Milky Way's center. In a new study, published Monday (Feb. 10) in The Astronomical Journal, a different group of researchers has identified a new star that could be the larger object from this mysterious pair. The star has a mass roughly one-fifth that of the sun and is located around 24,000 light-years from Earth in the galactic interior. Based on its location relative to the 2011 sighting, the researchers calculated that the star is traveling at least 1.2 million mph (1.9 million km/h). No alien world was spotted during the new observation, which is unsurprising given that it can take years of constant monitoring to detect an exoplanet circling a star. However, based on the size of the larger object, the researchers could predict the mass of the potential exoplanet and its distance from its home star. "We think this is a so-called super-Neptune world [roughly 30 times more massive than our planet] orbiting a low-mass star at a distance that would lie between the orbits of Venus and Earth if it were in our solar system," study lead author Sean Terry, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement. "If so, it will be the first planet ever found orbiting a hypervelocity star." (Given the star's small size, the planet would almost certainly be uninhabitable, the team added.) Related: 32 alien planets that really exist At this speed, the potential planetary system would be moving through the Milky Way roughly twice as fast as the solar system. However, it could be traveling even faster, because the new observations do not take into account its direction relative to our system, the researchers wrote. If the stellar contender is traveling at more than 1.3 million mph (2.1 million km/h), it will have a sufficient escape velocity to one day leave the Milky Way and drag its planetary companion with it into intergalactic space, NASA representatives wrote in the statement. However, the team is still unsure about the objects' true sizes and speeds — or even what they really are. Even if the larger object from 2011 is a star, there is no guarantee that it is the same star spotted in the new study, or that it is moving at the speed the researchers calculated, because they have not actually seen it move yet. "To be certain the newly identified star is part of the system that caused the 2011 signal, we'd like to look again in another year and see if it moves the right amount and in the right direction to confirm it came from the point where we detected the signal," study co-author David Bennett, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA Goddard, said in the statement. RELATED STORIES —Scientists discover the fastest stars ever seen in the Milky Way —Enormous planet discovered around tiny star could break our understanding of solar system formation —The fastest-moving stars in the galaxy may be piloted by intelligent aliens, new paper suggests There is also an alternative explanation for the 2011 sighting: that the pair of objects is actually a giant rogue exoplanet being orbited by a massive exomoon. In this scenario, the duo would also be located much closer to Earth. If future observations show the star does not move, "that would mean the rogue planet and exomoon model is favored," study co-author Aparna Bhattacharya, a research scientist at the University of Maryland and NASA Goddard, said in the statement. Take another science quiz: —Black hole quiz: How supermassive is your knowledge of the universe? —Solar system quiz: How well do you know our cosmic neighborhood? —James Webb Space Telescope quiz: How well do you know the world's most powerful telescope?
