V830 Tau tagged posts

The youngest known hot Jupiter, detected around the star in formation V830 Tau, travels through the star’s magnetic web (white and blue lines), making it hard to detect such planets. Credit: Jean-François Donati/CNRS

For the past 20 years, exoplanets known as ‘hot Jupiters’ have puzzled astronomers. These giant planets orbit 100 times closer to their host stars than Jupiter does to the Sun, which increases their surface temperatures. But how and when in their history did they migrate so close to their star? Now, an international team of astronomers has announced the discovery of a very young hot Jupiter orbiting in the immediate vicinity of a star that is barely 2 million years old – the stellar equivalent of a week-old infant...

Artist’s impression of a gas giant planet in formation within the protoplanetary disc of a young star. Credit: NASA / JPL

20 years after they were first discovered, ‘hot Jupiters’, gas giant planets that orbit very close to their star, are still enigmatic objects. Using spectropolarimeter ESPaDOnS on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, an international team led by Jean-François Donati (CNRS) has shown that such bodies may only take several million years to migrate close to their newly formed star. The discovery should shed light on how solar systems like – or unlike – our own Solar System form and evolve over the course of their existence.

In the Solar System, rocky planets like the Earth and Mars are found near the Sun, whereas gas giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn are further awa...