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That's one of the widest planetary orbits known, said the authors of the study, which was published online Wednesday (Dec. (One AU is the average Earth-sun distance: about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers). (The study team's research also revealed that ESO's 3.6-meter telescope in Chile managed to image the newfound planet more than 20 years ago, though nobody realized that at the time.)įor example, b Centauri b currently lies about 550 astronomical units (AU) from the star duo - about 14 times farther away than Pluto's average distance from the sun. Analysis of the SPHERE observations allowed the researchers to characterize the planet, which has other extraordinary characteristics beyond its enormous size and the mass and heat of its parent stars. SPHERE took a direct image of b Centauri b, a feat the instrument has pulled off with several other exoplanets. Janson and his colleagues discovered b Centauri b using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument, which is installed on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile. Star facts: The basics of star names and evolution "It was believed that it should be exceedingly difficult to form large planets around them." "B-type stars are generally considered as quite destructive and dangerous environments," Janson said. That's about three times hotter than our G-type sun, and hotter than any other known planet-hosting star.ī Centauri B is therefore blasting out lots of high-energy X-ray and ultraviolet radiation, which tends to disperse planet-forming dust and gas. The main star, b Centauri A, is a B-type star with an estimated temperature around 32,000 degrees Fahrenheit (18,000 degrees Celsius), researchers said. The b Centauri system's heat and power bolsters that bad-parent assumption. After all, the heftiest known planet-harboring binary star system contains 2.7 solar masses, and the heaviest single stars confirmed to have worlds orbiting them are about three times more massive than our sun, study team members said. The duo's combined mass would seemingly make them unlikely planet hosts. The two b Centauri stars are about 15 million years old - young pups compared to our sun, which has been burning for more than 4.5 billion years. (Image credit: ESO/Janson et al.) A massive and hot star system
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The bright dot in the upper right is a background star. This image, captured by the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, shows the most massive known planet-hosting star pair, b Centauri (at left), and its giant planet b Centauri b (arrow).