NASA’s Webb and Chile telescope discover faint new planet after 11-year cosmic hide-and-seek
FILE - This artist’s concept depicts the young Beta Pictoris planetary system with the newly discovered giant exoplanet, Beta Pictoris d, at the right. (Credit: Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI))
Astronomers have discovered a new planet more than a decade after a game of cosmic hide-and-seek.
The planet, which NASA has dubbed Beta Pictoris d, is believed to be the faintest planet ever directly imaged from Earth, scientists at the European Southern Observatory said on Wednesday.
Dig deeper:
Beta Pictoris d is orbiting the star Beta Pictoris which is about 63 light years from Earth.
A Scottish and German-led team found it using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, then dug through archives to confirm its orbit.
The planet had remained hidden in the data all this time, overshadowed by its considerably brighter star and two companion planets.
The new planet is slightly bigger than Jupiter and takes about 91 years to orbit its star. Uranus, in comparison, takes a little less time to orbit our sun.
What they're saying:
"It was very much playing hide-and-seek for 11 years," said the European Southern Observatory’s Markus Bonse, co-leader of the first team to discover the planet.
A California-led team made the discovery with NASA’s Webb Space Telescope and both teams reported their findings in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The Source: Information for this article was taken from The Associated Press and NASA’s website. This story was reported from San Jose.