According to CNN’s report, as a result of astronomers’ observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Telescope, another “sister” planet to a Jupiter-like exoplanet orbiting a young star has been discovered.
It was stated that two planets named “PDS 70b” and “PDS 70c” were detected in the orbit of the star before, but a cloud of debris was observed on the orbit of “PDS 70b”, which could be the building blocks of a planet in the process of formation or already formed.
It was recorded that the mass of the debris cloud is about 2 times that of the Moon.
The US Aerospace Agency (NASA) announced that the exoplanet “PDS 70b”, discovered in 2018, is 3 Jupiter masses and took more than 119 years to complete its orbit around its star.
Madrid Astrobiology Center Research Fellow and lead author of the study, Dr. “20 years ago it was theoretically predicted that pairs of planets of similar mass, called ‘Trojan horses’ or ‘co-orbital planets’, could share the same orbit around their star. For the first time, we have found evidence that fits this theory,” Olga Balsalobre-Ruza said in a statement. she said.
Balsalobre-Ruza noted that it is thought that a Jupiter-like planet may share its orbit with thousands of meteorites, but it is interesting that the planets share the same orbit.
Scientists think that if the planets in question were imaged, it could be “the strongest evidence to date that the two planets can share the same orbit.”
It is stated that “Trojan horses”, which are also common in the Solar System, are rocky celestial bodies in the same orbit as planets, a couple orbiting the Earth and more than 12 thousand “Trojan” meteorites orbiting Jupiter.
The research has been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. (AA)