Located just 330 light years from our solar system, it has 10 times the mass of Jupiter.
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Scientists at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in the US discovered a massive newborn planet which is closer to Earth than any other of the same age known until today, inform RIT on its website.
The giant planet ‘baby’, called 2MASS 1155-7919 b, is located in the constellation Epsilon Chamaeleontis and just 330 light years from our solar system, according to the study published February 7 in the scientific journal Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.
Markedly young, the space object, “dark and cold”, “it has only 10 times the mass of Jupiter, which means that we are probably observing a child planet, perhaps still in the middle of its formation, “said Annie Dickson-Vandervelde, lead author and assistant professor at RIT.” Although many other planets have been discovered through the Kepler mission and similar ones, almost all are ‘old’ planets, “he added.
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The planet ‘baby’ is in orbit around a star that is only about 5 million years old, a thousand times younger than him Sun. How could this giant planet form so far from its young star ‘mother’, remains a mystery that scientists try to solve with more images and spectroscopic data.
To make the discovery, astronomers used data from the Gaia space observatory of the European Space Agency.
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