LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – A Texas Tech University physicist is part of an international research team that used NASA\u2019s planet-hunting satellite in a new way to confirm the existence of a distant exoplanet nearly 40,000 light-years from Earth.<\/p>\n
Michael Fausnaugh, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, and astronomers from the University of New Mexico used NASA\u2019s TESS \u2014 the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite \u2014 to help confirm a planet initially flagged by the European Space Agency\u2019s now-retired Gaia space telescope in 2023. The planet, called Gaia23bra b, is described as a super Jupiter orbiting far from its host star. The team\u2019s findings are scheduled to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.<\/p>\n
The detection relied on gravitational microlensing, a technique that uses the gravitational pull of a foreground star to magnify light from a more distant background star. If a planet orbits the foreground star, its presence can be detected through that magnification.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a background star with a foreground star in front of it magnifying its light,\u201d Fausnaugh said. \u201cIf there\u2019s a planet orbiting the foreground star, you can see the signature of the planet through gravitational microlensing. The technique is well-established, but we had never done it with TESS, and the unique thing about TESS is it takes images every couple of minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Gaia flagged a star brightening, researchers searched archived TESS data and found the event had been captured there as well.<\/p>\n
The planet orbits an orange dwarf star estimated at about 80% of the sun\u2019s mass. According to the findings, the system is nearly 40,000 light-years from Earth.<\/p>\n
Of more than 6,000 known exoplanets, about 75% were discovered through the transit method \u2014 the technique TESS typically uses \u2014 in which astronomers monitor stars for periodic dimming caused by an orbiting planet passing in front of them. Microlensing has revealed less than 5% of known exoplanets.<\/p>\n
The transit method is most effective at finding large planets orbiting close to their host stars. Gravitational microlensing is better suited to detecting planets like Jupiter and Saturn \u2014 massive worlds that orbit farther from their stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to find planets, we have very limited ways of detecting them, and most of the planets we\u2019ve found so far have been what you might consider the easy planets to find,\u201d Fausnaugh said. \u201cThe problem is those planets are close to the stars, and they go around the stars very quickly. Then there\u2019s others that are Jupiter size, but they\u2019re so close to the star that they are also very hot. They don\u2019t match what we have in our solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fausnaugh said the discovery reflects the broader significance of the work.<\/p>\n
\u201cAstronomy really sparks the imagination,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s always this gap between the data and the interpretation. It can be a complicated and technical process, but here, our best physical description of this star system says, \u2018There\u2019s a planet up there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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