Jupiter-sized Planet found in Triple-Star System
Scientists have discovered a rare triple-star system with a gas giant planet similar in size to Jupiter. Researchers at Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in US found that a binary system one assumed to be a single star was actually a pair of stars orbiting one another and are actually a part of the triple-star system. This is rare that three stars are appearing in the sky. The new discovery is the fourth and the closest one yet allowing for a better look than possible, researchers said.
The main star is also brighter than other stars that serve as suns for their planets, making it easier to study both the star and the planet.In the new system KELT-4Ab, is a gas giant planetsimilar in size to Jupiter takes approximately three days to make its way around the star KELT-A which serve as its sun. The other two stars, named KELT-B and C are much farther away and orbit one another over the course of approximately thirty years. It takes the pair approximately four thousand years to orbit KELT-A. The view from KELT-4Ab would likely be one where its sun KELT-A would appear roughly forty times as big as our sun does to us due to its close proximity. On the other hand, the two other orbiting stars would appear much dimmer due to their great distance and would be shining no brighter than our moon. The triple-star system offers a unique opportunity for scientists trying to understand how it is that gas giantsKELT-4Ab, manage to orbit so close to their star.
The astronomical journal reported about the discovery. Find it here:
"We report the discovery of KELT-4Ab, an inflated, transiting Hot Jupiter orbiting the brightest component of a hierarchical triple stellar system. In addition, its existence within a hierarchical triple and its proximity to Earth (210 pc) provide a unique opportunity for dynamical studies with continued monitoring with high resolution imaging and precision radial velocities. The projected separation between KELT-4A and KELT-4BC is 328 ± 16 AU and the projected separation between KELT-4B and KELT-4C is 10.30 ± 0.74 AU. Assuming face-on, circular orbits, their respective periods would be 3780 ± 290 and 29.4 ± 3.6 years and the astrometric motions relative to the epoch in this work of both the binary stars around each other and of the binary around the primary star would be detectable now and may provide meaningful constraints on the dynamics of the system."
