SAN FRANCISCO, iNews.id – Astronomers have discovered a planet previously thought impossible. The planet orbits a very large and very hot star system.
The planet orbiting the two-star system b Centauri challenges assumptions about where planets could form. Located in the constellation Centaurus, 325 light-years away, system b Centauri consists of two stars with a combined mass of at least six times the mass of the Sun.
Massive stars also tend to be very hot like these systems, with their main star three times hotter than the Sun. This combination of massive and extremely hot stars made it impossible for planet formation, and to date no planet has been found orbiting a star more than three times the mass of the Sun.
But in the case of b Centauri, a planet orbiting about 100 times Jupiter’s distance from the sun was detected using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope.
Editor: Dini Listiyani
