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Bizarre Planet Gets Light from Three Suns

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Binary star system

Artist’s rendition of binary star system.

Astronomers have just detected a strange triple star system where an exoplanet lies between three suns. The system, which is located 320 light years away within the Milky Way, has other surprises in store.

For instance, the lonely planet dubbed HD 131399Ab is not supposed to be located within the system in the first place, if we take into account astronomers’ calculations. Yet, the world is very real as direct imaging has recently shown.

A Strange Exoplanet

The strange planet which is located at the center of the triple star system is also on the verge of being ejected from the bizarre solar system, researchers noted. ,” Kevin Wagner, one of the scientists who discovered the system and astronomer at University of Arizona, explained that other similar planets located in solar systems with multiple stars are not located so close to their host stars as HD 131399Ab is.

Other exoplanets are usually located closer to one star, but the distance between them is still large enough for the stars’ influence on the planets to be insignificant. However, the newly found planet just sits a third of the way between its parent stars.

In short, the planet is so close to all of its three parent stars that at some point in its orbital path it can sense the gravitational tug of all three stars. Plus, being located a third of the way of a star makes the planet’s orbit highly unstable, so some scientists expect the star to leave the system at some point.

Scientists Divided over Orbital Stability

If that happens, HD 131399Ab will morph into a stray planetary mass object. However, Wagner’s team is confident that the star is somehow stable. Researchers explained that if the star was on an unstable orbit it should have departed by now.

Scientist estimate that the planet would have needed to complete just a few of its century-long orbits to leave the system for good if it were indeed unstable. And researchers think that the solar system is several million years old.

On the other hand, other researchers expect the system to become unstable since humans were able to track the planet in its orbital path for just one year. It is worth noting that HD 131399Ab needs 550 years to complete a full orbit.

A study on the strange star system was published July 7 in the journal Science.
Image Source: Flickr

ESA Cast Doubts on the Discovery of Gravitational Waves

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Gravitational waves: Bicep2 at the South Pole

In March 2014, a group of astronomers claimed that they had found gravitational waves from the early universe. The discovery marked a new history in the arena of science. The finding is commonly known as BICEP2.

Recently, The European Space Agency completely rebuffs the idea of BICEP2. The intergovernmental organization informs that scientists considered dust particles of Milky Way as the gravitational waves.

Marc Kamiokowski, a cosmologist at Johns Hopkins University said that scientists no longer believe that BICEP2 spotted gravitational waves.

Scientists of Planck satellite worked together with the experts of BICEP2.  They compare the data of BICEP2 telescope with the Planck satellite in order to determine the accuracy of gravitational waves.  The BICEP2 data was recorded at a frequency of 150 gigahertz. In comparison, the Planck’s data was observed at 353 GHz.  The two telescopes studied the same region of the Milky Way.

In the end, the close analysis of the data shows that polarization of Cosmic Background Radiation is dust of Milky Way. Earlier, scientists interpreted these dust particles as the gravitational waves.

Jean Loup Puget, a Planck scientist at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale discussed the outcome of the research in detail. He informs that joint effort of the two teams reveals that primordial B modes are only the galactic dust.

A 7 million light year distant “Dwarf Galaxy” discovered

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Dwarf-Galaxy-discovered

Scientists have found another dwarf galaxy using Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera. It is the second small galaxy found after KKR25 in 1999 by the same group of scientists.

A team of American and Russian Scientists have discovered a new unknown dwarf galaxy present at a distance of 7 million light years from Earth. The galaxy was spotted by Special Astrophysical Observatory in Karachai-Cherkessia, Russia.

The new galaxy named KKs3 is one of the 50 galaxies known as the “Local Group” that contains both our Milky Way and the Andromeda. The size of the newly discovered galaxy is much smaller than ours. It is about one-ten thousand of the Milky Way.

The “Dwarf spheroidal” galaxy KKs3 has no spiral arms and absence of gas or dust, the substance that are required to create new stars. Scientists believe that gas and dust are removed from a burst of star formation.

Dimitry Makarov, one of the part of the Hubble team said “Finding objects like KKs3 is painstaking work, even with observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope. But with persistence, we’re slowly building up a map of our local neighbourhood, which turns out to be less empty than we thought,”

“But with persistence, we’re slowly building up a map of our local neighbourhood, which turns out to be less empty than we thought. It may be that are a huge number of dwarf spheroidal galaxies out there, something that would have profound consequences for our ideas about the evolution of the cosmos.” He concluded.

An Isolated Dwarf Galaxy discovered by Hubble is close by

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Isolated-Dwarf-Galaxy

The Russian researchers from the Special Astrophysical Observatory in Karachai-Cherkessia, Russia have located an unknown dwarf galaxy named KKs3 about 7 million light years away from us located in the southern constellation of Hydrus. These researchers were working in tandem with Astronomers using Hubble Space Telescope’s advanced camera system and have collaboratively identified a new dwarf galaxy.

This discovery is quite unprecedented as KKs3 is well inside the well mapped “Local Group” of 50 known galaxies where the much famous Andromeda and our very own Milky Way reside. As a matter of fact, this finding has led astronomers to wonder that how many other close by dwarf galaxies have gone undiscovered.

This dwarf spheroidal galaxy accounts to just one by ten-thousandth of our Milky Way and also does not have spiral arms that many of the viewers might expect.

The Dwarf galaxies are fascinating objects as they don’t have the resources in terms of gas and dust required to create new generations of stars. But still, dwarf galaxies are very ancient and the observation of their stars is closely related to a cosmic archeological dig. Since they are quite old, their stars are also very dim making these dwarf galaxies very difficult to detect.

These dwarf galaxies normally orbit their big brothers like the Milky Way and Andromeda and are known to have several satellite dwarf galaxies and their star forming gases are thought to have been stolen by their more massive galactic neighbors. There are also possibilities that larger galaxies eat up these dwarfs during their formation. But KKs3 is not in any close proximity to another galaxy; it is completely isolated and joins a very exclusive club of only two galaxies. The other isolated dSph galaxy being the KKR 25 was found in 1999 and is also located in the same Local Group.

These isolated dSph galaxies were formed differently than their larger counterparts. Isolated dSphs are not affected by the gravitational forces of their neighbors, so they are likely to hold onto almost all of their star-forming gases but they consumed all of it in an early burst of star formation during the early days of the universe. An absence of interstellar gas indicates that astronomers have to scan intergalactic space very carefully so they don’t miss the faint stars of dSph galaxies. And that is why no dSphs have been found by Hubble out of the Local Group.

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