A University of HawaiĘ»i Institute for Astronomy (IfA) graduate student has beaten the odds and discovered a directly imaged exoplanet, and it’s the closest one to Earth ever found, at a distance of only 35 light years
Using the COol Companions ON Ultrawide orbiTS (COCONUTS) survey, IfA graduate student Zhoujian Zhang and a team of astronomers, Michael Liu and Zach Claytor (IfA), William Best (University of Texas at Austin), Trent Dupuy (University of Edinburgh) and Robert Siverd (Gemini Observatory/National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory) identified a planet about six times the mass of Jupiter.
Using the COol Companions ON Ultrawide orbiTS (COCONUTS) survey, IfA graduate student Zhoujian Zhang and a team of astronomers, Michael Liu and Zach Claytor (IfA), William Best (University of Texas at Austin), Trent Dupuy (University of Edinburgh) and Robert Siverd (Gemini Observatory/National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory) identified a planet about six times the mass of Jupiter.
The team’s research, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, led to the discovery of the low-temperature gas-giant planet orbiting a low-mass red dwarf star, about 6,000 times farther than the Earth orbits the Sun. They dubbed the new planetary system COCONUTS-2, and the new planet COCONUTS-2b.
“With a massive planet on a super-wide-separation orbit, and with a very cool central star, COCONUTS-2 represents a very different planetary system than our own solar system,” Zhang explained. The COCONUTS survey has been the focus of his recently-completed PhD thesis, aiming to find wide-separation companions around stars of all different types close to Earth. READ MORE
“With a massive planet on a super-wide-separation orbit, and with a very cool central star, COCONUTS-2 represents a very different planetary system than our own solar system,” Zhang explained. The COCONUTS survey has been the focus of his recently-completed PhD thesis, aiming to find wide-separation companions around stars of all different types close to Earth. READ MORE
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