US EditionThis Giant Planet Shouldn’t Exist – But Astronomers Just Found It Around a Tiny Star
- Astronomers identified TOI-6894b, a gas giant planet completing a three-day revolution around one of the smallest known stars hosting such a planet, located about 240 light-years away in the constellation Leo.
- The discovery followed a survey of over 91,000 low-mass red dwarf stars using NASA’s TESS and the ESO’s VLT, challenging current planet formation theories.
- TOI-6894b is a gas giant with a radius exceeding that of Saturn while having just over half its mass, orbiting its host star at a distance roughly forty times shorter than the gap between Earth and the Sun, resulting in a moderately warm equilibrium temperature near 420 K.
- Edward Bryant highlighted that understanding how a planet of such considerable size can form around a very small star is a challenge posed by this discovery, and currently, there is no clear explanation.
- This finding implies many more giant planets could exist around common small stars, forcing a rethink of planetary population estimates and formation models.
13 Articles
13 Articles
This Giant Planet Shouldn’t Exist – But Astronomers Just Found It Around a Tiny Star
A tiny star just one-fifth the mass of our Sun has shocked astronomers by hosting a gas giant planet, TOI-6894b—something long thought nearly impossible. The find, made through TESS data and confirmed by one of the world’s largest telescopes, challenges leading theories of planet formation. Discovery of a Planet Around a Tiny Star TOI-6894 is [...]
[An article by The Conversation written by Mickael Bonnefoy - Researcher CNRS at the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics of Grenoble, Grenoble Alpes University (UGA)] You take us on a journey into an atypical stellar system, YSES-1. Why does it intrigue scientists? M. B.: The YSES-1 system is atypical in the exoplanetary bestiary. Located more than 300 light-years away from us, this system 270 times younger than the solar system consists o…
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