Binary Star System tagged posts

This is an illustration of this highly unusual system, which features the smallest-separation binary stars that both host planets ever discovered. Only six other metal-poor binary star systems with exoplanets have ever been found. Credit: Illustration is courtesy of Timothy Rodigas.

Carnegie scientists have discovered three giant planets in a binary star system composed of stellar ”twins” that are also effectively siblings of our Sun. One star hosts two planets and the other hosts the third. The system represents the smallest-separation binary in which both stars host planets that has ever been observed. The findings, which may help explain the influence that giant planets like Jupiter have over a solar system’s architecture, have been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.

The observed (open circles) and theoretical (solid line) light curve of V921 Her. Theoretical light curve without contaminated by the third light is plotted with dashed line. Credit: Zhou et al., 2016.

China’s Chang’e-3 mission landed on the moon in Dec 2013 and deployed lunar rover Yutu or Jade Rabbit; it also carried a robotic telescope designed to observe various celestial objects such as galaxies, active galactic nuclei, variable stars, binaries, novae, quasars and blazars in the near-ultraviolet band. The Lunar-based Ultraviolet Telescope (LUT) was recently used by a team of Chinese astronomers to observe a peculiar binary star designated V921 Her.

LUT is the first robotic astronomical telescope deployed on the lunar surface...