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The newly confirmed world, called Beta Pictoris d, circles the young star Beta Pictoris about 63 light-years from Earth. <\/p>\n
It is a gas giant<\/a>, but it is much lighter and dimmer than the other planets already known in the system. That made it especially difficult to spot.<\/p>\n Its discovery also helps explain the unusual shape of the ring of rocky debris surrounding the star, giving astronomers another clue about how this planetary system formed and changed over time.<\/p>\n A surprise hiding in plain sight<\/p>\n The discovery did not begin with a search for a new planet. <\/p>\n Researchers were studying a giant planet<\/a> that had been observed for years. After examining the images, they noticed another faint object nearby.<\/p>\n Ben Sutlieff is co-lead of the study and an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh<\/a> in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a serendipitous discovery. We initially wanted to look more at a known planet in the system, Beta Pictoris b, to see how it changed over time,\u201d said Sutlieff.<\/p>\n Markus Bonse, an ESO astronomer in Germany and the other co-lead of the study, remembered the moment the team realized something unexpected had appeared in the data. <\/p>\n \u201c\u2018There\u2019s something else there, did you see it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The old data held the answer<\/p>\n Instead of waiting years for new observations, the researchers searched through archived images collected by the European Southern Observatory. <\/p>\n They found the same object appearing again and again in observations dating back 11 years.<\/p>\n In one image, the planet was barely visible against the bright glow of Beta Pictoris b.<\/p>\n Study co-author Jayne Birkby is an astronomer at the University of Oxford<\/a> in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n \u201cPlanet d, it seems, has been playing a game of hide-and-seek with us for over a decade and only now can we say \u2018found you!\u2019\u201d said Birkby.<\/p>\n The planet was first clearly detected using the ERIS instrument on the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope in Chile. <\/p>\n More exciting discoveries ahead<\/p>\n An independent team led by Aidan Gibbs at the University of California also identified the same planet using the James Webb Space Telescope.<\/p>\n Birkby said, \u201cTo our joy, out it popped in previous SPHERE observations.\u201d <\/p>\n After the researchers knew exactly where to search, they also found the planet in archived observations from the James Webb Space Telescope. <\/p>\n \u201cIt turns out it was hiding in the data all along!\u201d Birkby said.<\/p>\n Valentin Christiaens, a researcher at CEA Paris-Saclay in France and co-author of the study, expressed excitement over what else may be hiding in the archives.<\/p>\n \u201cThe detections in the archival SPHERE data are not only very exciting on their own, but also because they suggest a number of treasures are still hidden in the archives of VLT instruments!\u201d<\/p>\n One of the faintest planets ever photographed<\/p>\n Beta Pictoris d is a gas giant like Jupiter<\/a> and Saturn<\/a>, but it is much smaller than the system\u2019s other two known planets.<\/p>\n While Beta Pictoris b and c each have about ten times Jupiter\u2019s mass, Beta Pictoris d has only 2.4 times Jupiter\u2019s mass. That makes it one of the lightest exoplanets ever directly imaged from the ground.<\/p>\n The planet also orbits much farther from its star than the other two planets and is much cooler. <\/p>\n Because cooler planets give off much less infrared light, they are far more difficult to detect next to the intense brightness of their parent stars.<\/p>\n \u201cThe new planet is 100 times fainter than Beta Pictoris b, the famous planet in the same system, making it the faintest exoplanet<\/a> ever imaged directly from Earth,\u201d explained Bonse.<\/p>\n Direct imaging remains one of astronomy\u2019s toughest techniques because the light from a star can overwhelm the faint glow coming from its planets. <\/p>\n Special instruments use advanced optics and image-processing methods to reduce the star\u2019s glare, allowing astronomers to capture rare direct views of distant worlds.<\/p>\n A system that keeps teaching astronomers<\/p>\n The Beta Pictoris system has attracted astronomers for decades because the star is only about 20 million years old. <\/p>\n That makes it very young compared with our Sun, which is about 4.6 billion years old.<\/p>\n Young planetary systems allow scientists to watch how planets settle into their final orbits and interact with leftover material from their formation.<\/p>\n The discovery also solves a long-standing puzzle. Beta Pictoris d has the right mass and orbital position to explain the unusual shape of the system\u2019s debris disk, which is made of leftover rock, ice, and dust from planet formation.<\/p>\n Looking for planets in the archives<\/p>\n Beta Pictoris is now only the second known planetary system, after HR 8799, where more than two planets have been directly imaged.<\/p>\n \u201cSystems with multiple directly imaged exoplanets are the \u2018holy grails\u2019 of discoveries, because they can teach us a lot about what different exoplanets are like in the same formation environment,\u201d said Sutlieff.<\/p>\n As more powerful telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Extremely Large Telescope, come online, astronomers expect to find many more faint planets. <\/p>\n Some will come from new observations, while others may already be hiding in years of archived telescope data.<\/p>\n The full study was published in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters<\/a>.<\/p>\n Image Credit: ESO\/B. Sutlieff, M. Bonse et al.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers have found a planet that managed to stay out of sight for more than a decade, even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-550280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}