Beta Pictoris d is estimated to be around two times the mass of Jupiter.
NASA scientists have discovered a new planet orbiting a neighbouring star located 63 light years away from us. The new exoplanet, named ‘Beta Pictoris d’, is the third to be found contained within the Beta Pictoris planetary system.
The 23m-year-old star Beta Pictoris offers scientists a rare glimpse into how newborn planetary systems form, and how its young planets interact with the dust and residual material left behind from their formation.
The sun, in comparison, is around 4.5bn years old.
The new discovery makes Beta Pictoris the second planetary system ever known to contain at least three planets that have been imaged, NASA said today (15 July).
According to the team behind the discovery, Beta Pictoris d is estimated to be around two times the mass of Jupiter, while orbiting its star at around 30 astronomical units – which is comparable to the region Neptune occupies in our solar system. It’s the smallest of the three exoplanets orbiting this star, and takes the widest orbit of the known three.
Beta Pictoris d remained hidden under one of the brightest debris disks known to us, concealing it from traditional discovery techniques. It was discovered rather unexpectedly using the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) Near-Infrared Spectrograph.
“There was an unexpected bright source of light within the Integral Field Unit imaging, but we’ve learned not to trust bright blobs in images,” said Jean-Baptiste Ruffio, a research scientist at University of California, San Diego and principal investigator of the first Webb observations where the discovery was made.
“They can be instrumental artifacts or other structures in the debris disk. By obtaining a spectrum at the same time as the image, we were able to quickly confirm our suspicions.”
The new spectroscopy technique also revealed the object’s motion, allowing scientists confirm that the exoplanet is indeed orbiting Beta Pictoris, rather than a behaving like a background star or a brown dwarf with carbon monoxide in its atmosphere.
This is one of the first times researchers have discovered new planets mainly using moderate-resolution spectroscopy.
Scientists say this new discovery could help explain some of the puzzling structures of the Beta Pictoris debris disk.
“This discovery adds another piece to an already fascinating planetary system,” said Aidan Gibbs, the lead author of the new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“Beta Pictoris has long served as a laboratory for understanding how planetary systems form and evolve, and now we have another planet helping us tell that story.”
Last year, astronomers witnessed the very early stages of a new solar system being created around a baby star roughly 1,300 light years away, while earlier this year, 25-year-old University of Galway scientist Chloe Lawler discovered a 5m-year-old exoplanet some 437 light years away.
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