Friday, December 13, 2013

This Exoplanet Is Turning Planetary Formation Scenarios Upside Down

This Exoplanet Is Turning Planetary Formation Scenarios Upside Down:
Artist's conception of a planet like HD106906 b. Visible in the picture is a debris disk and its distant host star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This Exoplanet Is Turning Planetary Formation Scenarios Upside Down
Artist’s conception of a planet like HD 106906 b. Visible in the picture is a debris disk and its distant host star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
What the heck is that giant exoplanet doing so far away from its star? Astronomers are still trying to figure out the curious case of HD 106906 b, a newly found gas giant that orbits at an astounding 650 astronomical units or Earth-sun distances from its host star. For comparison, that’s more than 20 times farther from its star than Neptune is from the sun.
“This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see,” stated Vanessa Bailey, a graduate astronomy student at the University of Arizona who led the research.
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Read the rest of This Exoplanet Is Turning Planetary Formation Scenarios Upside Down (506 words)

© Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, 2013. |Permalink |No comment |
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