It has long been known (since Edwin Hubble's decades of study, then sorted carefully by Otto Struve), that orbiting planets cause their stars to rock back and forth ever so slightly, as the planets’ gravity pulls the stars one way and another. And these particularly odd. . . to and 'fro motions, are what led the team in Chile to find this diamond in the rough. Here's the story -- still developing (likely now awaiting secondary source / confirmation by JWST):
. . .A newly discovered planetary system, informally known as 2M1510, is among the strangest ever found. An apparent planet traces out an orbit that carries it far over the poles of two brown dwarfs. This pair of mysterious objects – too massive to be planets, not massive enough to be stars – also orbit each other. Yet a third brown dwarf orbits the other two at an extreme distance. . . .
“Circumbinary” planets, those orbiting two stars at once, are rare enough. A circumbinary orbiting at a 90-degree tilt was, until now, unheard of. But new measurements of this system, using the ESO (European Southern Observatory) Very Large Telescope in Chile, appear to reveal what scientists previously only imagined. . . .
[It was identified by using] “radial velocity” measurements. Orbiting planets cause their stars to rock back and forth ever so slightly, as the planets’ gravity pulls the stars one way and another; that pull causes subtle, but measurable, shifts in the star’s light spectrum. Add one more twist to the detection in this case: the push-me-pull-you effect of the planet on the two brown dwarfs’ orbit around each other. The path of the brown dwarf pair’s 21-day mutual orbit is being subtly altered in a way that can only be explained, the study’s authors conclude, by a polar-orbiting planet. . . .
Fascinating -- and lovely, in very sublime ways. . . graceful, even. Yes, yes -- wobble, baby -- to and 'fro, in unwasted. . . grace. Smile -- onward.
No comments:
Post a Comment