Home » Health » The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft finds Jupiter-like stars and planets

The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft finds Jupiter-like stars and planets

It European Space Agency (Isa) star mapping Gaia spaceship He discovered two new Jupiter-like planets in the solar system deep in the Milky Way.

This development is the first time a file Jaya The spacecraft managed to find a new planet. Gaia is a star scanning satellite on a mission to map the Milky Way in 3D with unprecedented accuracy.

Researchers from Tel Aviv University have identified the giant planets, called Gaia-1b and Gaia-2b. The new planet is very close to him sunSo the temperature there is very high, around 1000 degrees Celsius. As a result, they are also referred to as “hot Jupiters,” according to research published in the Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

“Measurements that we took with the Big Eye Telescope, in Arizona, USA, confirm that they are actually two giant planets, which are similar in size to the planet. Jupiter In our solar system, they are located so close to the sun that they complete an orbit in less than four days, which means that each year on Earth is equivalent to 90 years from the planet.” The sugarProfesor of Tao.

To complete his mission, Gaia scans the sky as it rotates around an axis, tracking the positions of about two billion suns, the star at the center of the solar system, in our galaxy to an accuracy of one millionth of a degree.

When tracking the positions of stars, Gaia also measures their brightness – a very important feature in observational astronomy, because it conveys important information about the physical properties of the celestial bodies around them. The documented change in the brightness of the two distant stars is what led to this discovery.

“The planets were discovered thanks to the fact that they partially cover their sun each time they complete an orbit, and thus cause a periodic decrease in the intensity of light reaching us from that distant sun,” said Aviad Panahi, a doctoral student at the University of California. know.

Gaia’s ability to detect planets through the partial occult method, which generally requires continuous observation over long periods of time, has so far been in doubt.

“The two new planets were discovered after a careful search using artificial intelligence methods,” he said. Zucker. “We have also published 40 additional candidates that we found by Gaia. The astronomy community must now try to confirm their planetary nature, as we did with the first two candidates.”

FacebookTwitterLinkedIn


Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.