Astronomers Directly Image Giant Planet-Like Object around Sun-Like Star
by Natali AndersonUsing three instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), an international team of astronomers has discovered and imaged a giant sub-stellar object — a giant planet or a brown dwarf — around the very young, Sun-like star TYC 8998-760-1.
![http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge7/image_8464_1e-TYC-8998-760-1b.jpg http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge7/image_8464_1e-TYC-8998-760-1b.jpg](http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge7/image_8464_1e-TYC-8998-760-1b.jpg)
TYC 8998-760-1 is a K3-type star located 309 light-years away in the small southern constellation of Musca.
Also known as 2MASS J13251211-6456207, the star is about the same mass as our Sun, but is only 16.7 million years old.
This means that its newly-imaged companion, dubbed TYC 8998-760-1b, formed only recently.
The object is 3 times the size of our Jupiter and about 14 times more massive.
It has an estimated surface temperature of about 1,400 degrees Celsius (2,600 degrees Fahrenheit) and likely has a highly inflated atmosphere.
“TYC 8998-760-1b is among the youngest and least massive companions that are directly detected around solar-type stars,” said Leiden Observatory astronomer Alexander Bohn and his colleagues from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and the United States.
![http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge7/image_8464_2e-TYC-8998-760-1b.jpg http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge7/image_8464_2e-TYC-8998-760-1b.jpg](http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge7/image_8464_2e-TYC-8998-760-1b.jpg)
The discovery is part of the Young Suns Exoplanet Survey (YSES) of 70 young, solar-mass stars located in the Lower Centaurus-Crux subgroup of the Scorpius-Centaurus association.
The researchers were able to directly image TYC 8998-760-1b using VLT’s SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research) and NaCo (Nasmyth Adaptive Optics System/Near-Infrared Imager and Spectrograph) instruments.
They also analyzed medium-resolution data on TYC 8998-760-1 collected by VLT’s X-SHOOTER spectrograph.
“The discovery of TYC 8998-760-1b opens many pathways for future ground and space-based characterization of the solar-like environment at a very early stage of its evolution,” the scientists said.
Their paper was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.