Astronomers were able to discover NGTS-4b using the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) instrument. Illustrative photo.
The undiscovered exoplanet is about three times the size of Earth. Scientists have called it “forbidden”. The planet orbits in the “Neptune Desert”, which is the name given to the region near the stars where no Neptune-sized planets are found. The exoplanet NGTS-4b is a medium-sized gas planet. Located 920 light years from Earth, it is confusing scientists.
Astronomers were able to discover NGTS-4b using the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) instrument. This instrument is made up of a dozen 20-centimeter telescopes located at the Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The planet was observed for 272 nights between 6 August 2016 and 5 May 2017.
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A team of astronomers has discovered NGTS-4b, a planet with a radius only 20% smaller than Neptune.
A planet orbits a distant star with a completely intact atmosphere. Scientists previously believed that this region was very inhospitable due to the star’s intense heat and radiation that prevents the planets from maintaining a gaseous atmosphere. Therefore, experts believed that the atmosphere would simply evaporate, leaving only the rocky core. However, the new exoplanet has lifted the cards, as this shows Research.
Planet baffles scientists: “Something is happening here”
The newly discovered exoplanet is “very, very close” to its star, says one researcher Daniel Bayliss. According to him, the planet orbits its star every 1.3 days, which also determines how close NGTS-4b is to its star. ” “When you are this close to a star, you get a lot of radiation from the star, and that’s enough to peel off the layers of the atmosphere on a planet the size of Neptune. We think there is probably around 1,000 degrees Celsius on that star. Planet.” says the astronomer.
Which is strange, because according to the original theory, this star should then evaporate. But despite the intense heat, its atmosphere did not evaporate, which means that something was happening here. But what?
“It’s possible the system is very young and the planets haven’t had enough time to evaporate. Or the planet just moved there recently.” speculates Bayliss, who also mentions as a possibility that the star around which the planet orbits may not emit as much radiation as scientists expected.
It’s just that the planet and its atmosphere don’t evaporate! Either it moved to the area in the last few million years, or it was very large and its atmosphere is still evaporating.
How to find the stars
When astronomers look for stars and new planets, they usually look for a drop in the star’s light that signals that an exoplanet has passed between it and Earth during its orbit. They usually monitor the star’s brightness for many months, looking for very small dips in the star’s flux. They are the ones who tell them that the planet is passing close to Earth.
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Natalia Borůvková
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So far, scientists have only been able to detect larger exoplanets, the size of Jupiter, which dim the star’s light by 1% as they pass. But for the exoplanet NGTS-4b, astronomers’ telescopes were able to detect the planet, even though it only dimmed the star’s light by less than 0.2%.
“This is the first time we have been able to detect such a small signal from Earth, and therefore we have been able to detect a planet that is much, much smaller than Jupiter.” Bayliss said.
Source: Youtube
Scientists are now examining the data further to see if there may be other planets in the Neptune Desert. So this place is not as desolate as astronomers thought.
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