A young giant planet orbits one star, while a planet-forming disk exists around same-aged companion star

A team of international researchers led by Tomas Stolker in the Netherlands has imagined a young exoplanet gas giant near a 12 million-year-old star. The planet is in orbit around a star whose formation of the planet has ended, while a companion star of the same age in this double star system always has a planet training record.

The researchers published their results in the journal Astronomy and astrophysics.

The Double Star HD 135344 AB system is located around 440 light years in the constellation lupus. It consists of two young stars, A and B, which were orbits at great distances.

Stolker, from the University of Leiden to the Netherlands, studied Star B during his doctoral research from 2013 to 2017 due to his interesting planet training disc.

“Star A had never been studied because it did not contain a record. My colleagues and I were curious to know if he had already formed a planet,” said Stolker. “And so, after four years of meticulous measures and a little luck, the answer is yes.”

The newly discovered HD 135344 AB exoplanet is a young gas giant, no more than 12 million years. It has a mass about 10 times that of Jupiter. The distance from the planet of its star is comparable to the orbit of Uranus around the sun.

The researchers underline that Star A has already finished forming planets, while Star B still has a protoplanetary disc. This shows that the formation of planets around binary stars can occur on different deadlines.

Four years of follow -up

The researchers used the Sphere instrument on the very large telescope of the Southern European Observatory (ESO VLT) to capture the weak light of the potential planet. They found the planet quickly, but for a long time, it was not clear if it was a planet or a background star.

To exclude the possibility of a base star, the researchers also followed the planet with the Gravity instrument. This instrument combines the light of the four large VLT telescopes, which allows it to map the location of the planet with great precision. For four years, the researchers observed the star and the planet seven times and saw them move together. In other words, there is no background star.

“We were lucky, however,” said Stolker. “The angle between the planet and the star is now so small that the sphere can barely detect the planet.”

New population?

In the future, researchers will continue to monitor the planet using the Gravity instrument. They also hope to point the ELT, which is currently under construction, at the planet. This will allow them to determine the composition of the atmosphere and to find out more about the evolution of the planet.

In addition, they plan to search for gas giants near other young stars at distances similar to the newly discovered exoplanet orbit. Researchers think that HD 135344 AB could be part of a population of exoplanets that have so far been difficult to detect.