Researchers have found a multi-planetary system orbiting a “sun-like star” for the first time, as per a recently published investigation.
The exploration, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, portrays two giant exoplanets (TYC 8998-760-1b and TYC 8998-760-1c) orbiting the star TYC 8998-760-1, roughly 300 light-years from Earth. A light-year, which estimates distance in space, is around 6 trillion miles.
“This discovery is a snapshot of an environment that is very similar to our Solar System, but at a much earlier stage of its evolution,” the study’s lead author, Alexander Bohn, said in a statement.
The find was made by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.
Preceding this revelation, pictures of two multiplanet systems were captured, however neither had a “sunlike star,” the specialists included, making the disclosure even more significant.
“Even though astronomers have indirectly detected thousands of planets in our galaxy, only a tiny fraction of these exoplanets have been directly imaged,” Leiden University assistant professor and study co-author Matthew Kenworthy said, adding that “direct observations are important in the search for environments that can support life.”
Both TYC 8998-760-1b and TYC 8998-760-1c are monstrous, however TYC 8998-760-1b, which had previously been found, is fundamentally bigger than Jupiter, at 14 times its mass. TYC 8998-760-1c is six times the mass of Jupiter and the two planets orbit the star at roughly 160 and 320 astronomical units.
A astronomical unit, which measures the distance between the Earth and the sun, is roughly 93 million miles.
The specialists said that more research is expected to decide if extra planets spin around the 17-million-year-old star to make it significantly progressively like our own Solar System.
“The possibility that future instruments, such as those available on the [European Extremely Large Telescope], will be able to detect even lower-mass planets around this star marks an important milestone in understanding multiplanet systems, with potential implications for the history of our own solar system,” Bohn explained.
More than 4,000 exoplanets have been found by NASA altogether, about 50 of which were believed to conceivably be habitable as of September 2018. They have the right size and the right orbit of their star to help surface water and, in any event hypothetically, to help life.