[LINK] On the optical discovery of planet HD95086 b

[rfmcdonald]

Universe Today's Elizabeth Howell writes about the optical detection of a planet orbiting the distant young Sirius-like star HD95086. This planet is detectable only because it is both massive and young.

HD95086 b [is what] astronomers believe is one of only about a dozen exoplanets ever imaged. It’s 300 light-years from Earth. The planet candidate is about four to five times the mass of Jupiter and orbiting a very young star that is probably only 10 million to 17 million years old. That’s a baby compared to our own solar system, estimated at 4.5 billion years old.

We still have a lot to learn about this object (and the observations from the Very Large Telescope will need to be confirmed independently), but so far astronomers say they figure that planet formed in the gas and dust surrounding star HD 95086. But the planet is actually very far away from the star now, about twice the distance as the Sun-Neptune orbital span in our own solar system.

[. . .]

Astronomers estimate the planet candidate has a surface temperature of 1,292 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius), which could allow water vapor or methane to stick around in the atmosphere. It will take more VLT observations to figure this out, though.

The results from this study will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The paper is also available on prepublishing site Arxiv.