James Webb sees four exoplanets in a single system

Image courtesy google

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observed four exoplanets in the HR 8799 system. The planets are: 

  • HR 8799 b, c, d, and e 
  • 1.5 times more massive than the Sun 
  • Almost five times more luminous than the Sun 
  • Surrounded by a debris disk 
  • About 30 million years old 

The planets are massive, between 5.7 and 9.1 Jupiter masses. They’re brown dwarfs, which are barely below the point where deuterium fusion takes place. They range from 16 to 71 astronomical units away from the star, and have orbits from about 45 to about 460 years. 

The planets’ host star is a dim cool star known as an M dwarf, which is the most common type of star in the Milky Way. 

The JWST launched in 2021 and is powerful enough to probe the planets’ atmospheres in greater detail than other observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST observed two orbits of the planet around its star. An additional observation was expected in May to better parse the contents of the planet’s atmosphere

Most known exoplanets orbit stars that are similar to the Sun. These stars are main-sequence stars of spectral categories F, G, or K. 

Here are some examples of exoplanets orbiting sun-like stars: 

  • 51 Pegasi b: The first planet orbiting a sun-like star, discovered in 1995. 
  • Four exoplanets orbiting a nearby sun-like star: Discovered by MIT researchers. 
  • Two exoplanets orbiting a bright sun-like star: Discovered by astronomers. 
  • Two exoplanets orbiting an evolved sun-like star: Discovered by an international team of astronomers. 
  • Two giant exoplanets orbiting a young Sun-like star: Captured by astronomers using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. 

A new study of exoplanet data suggests there are at least 300 million potentially habitable planets orbiting stars like the sun.

Is there a multi planet so system around a sun like star

Yes, astronomers have directly imaged the first multi-planet system around a sun-like star.  The star, TYC 8998-760-1, is 300 light-years from Earth and is only 17 million years old.  The two giant planets, TYC 8998-760-1 b and c, were captured by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.  The planets are located in the center and bottom right of the image. 

The VLT is the world’s largest optical telescope. The discovery of this multi-planet system could help scientists better understand our own Sun

The first exoplanet discovered orbiting a sun-like star was 51 Pegasi b, also known as “Dimidium”. It was discovered in 1995 by Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz.  They used the radial velocity method, which is based on the gravitational interaction between the star and its planet. The planet’s orbit causes the star to move in a small circular or elliptical motion, which changes the star’s velocity towards or away from us. This change in velocity can be detected from the Doppler shift in the star’s spectral lines. 

51 Pegasi b is a “hot Jupiter” – a gas giant exoplanet. It orbits the nearby star 51 Pegasi in a four-day orbit. 

In 2019, Mayor and Queloz shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery

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