• VIDEOS
  • About
  • Contact
  • Despite Media
Ghana Election 2020
  • Home
  • Election 2020 Results
  • Local News
  • Politics
  • Showbiz
  • Sports
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • VIDEOS
  • Media
    • Videos
    • Audio
    • Photos
Local News
 
 
 
Home News Science & Environment 201210

Planet With Four Suns Discovered

17-Oct-2012
/ Science & Environment, News
Email
Print
Comments 0
(0)
Comments
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
 

Astronomers have found a planet whose skies are illuminated by four different suns - the first known of its type.

The distant world orbits one pair of stars which have a second stellar pair revolving around them.

The discovery was made by volunteers using the Planethunters.org website along with a team from UK and US institutes; follow-up observations were made with the Keck Observatory.

A report on the Arxiv server has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. Astronomers have found a planet whose skies are illuminated by four different suns - the first known of its type.

The distant world orbits one pair of stars which have a second stellar pair revolving around them.

The discovery was made by volunteers using the Planethunters.org website along with a team from UK and US institutes; follow-up observations were made with the Keck Observatory.

A report on the Arxiv server has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. The planet, located just under 5,000 light-years away, has been named PH1 after the Planet Hunters site.

It is thought to be a "gas giant" slightly larger than Neptune - more than six times the radius of the Earth. "You don't have to go back too far before you would have got really good odds against one of these systems existing," Dr Chris Lintott, from the University of Oxford, told BBC News. "All four stars pulling on it creates a very complicated environment. Yet there it sits in an apparently stable orbit.

"That's really confusing, which is one of the things which makes this discovery so fun. It's absolutely not what we would have expected."

Binary stars - systems with pairs of stars - are not uncommon. But only a handful of known exoplanets (planets that circle other stars) have been found to orbit such binaries. And none of these binary systems are known to have another pair of stars circling them.

Asked how this planet remained in a stable orbit whilst being pulled on by the gravity of four stars, Dr Lintott said: "There are six other well-established planets around double stars, and they're all pretty close to those stars.

"So I think what this is telling us is planets can form in the inner parts of protoplanetary discs (the torus of dense gas that gives rise to planetary systems).

"The planets are forming close in and are able to cling to a stable orbit there. That probably has implications for how planets form elsewhere."

PH1 was discovered by two US volunteers using the Planethunters.org website: Kian Jek of San Francisco and Robert Gagliano from Cottonwood, Arizona.

They spotted faint dips in light caused by the planet passing in front of its parent stars. The team of professional astronomers then confirmed the discovery using the Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

Founded in 2010, Planethunters.org aims to harness human pattern recognition to identify transits in publicly available data gathered by Nasa's Kepler Space Telescope.

Kepler was launched in March 2009 to search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. Visitors to the Planet Hunters website have access to randomly selected data from one of Kepler's target stars.

Volunteers are asked to draw boxes to mark the locations of visible transits - when a planet passes in front of its parent star.

Dr Lintott points out: "Computerised attempts to find things [in the data] missed this system entirely. That tells you there are probably more of these that are slipping through our fingers. We've just stuck a load of new data up on Planethunters.org to help people find the next one."

Searching for such systems, he said, was "a complicated test to hand a computer", adding: "We're using human pattern recognition, which can disentangle that reasonably well to see the important stuff."

Since December 2010, more than 170,000 members of the public have participated in the project.

Source: GNA

 

 
 

 

Comments ( 0 ): Post Your Comments >>

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
Featured Video
Previous Post

Cost of environmental degradation is 3.7 per cent of GDP – President Mahama

Next Post

10 Naughtiest Vegetables On Earth

 
 

More Stories

Ghanaian Climate Activist Wants Mandatory Climate Change Education For Youth
CSIR-SARI Introduces Farmers To Improved Farming Technologies
The African Youth Climate Hub Launches An Incubation Program For Green Start-Ups
EPA Poised To Safeguard The Environment In 2021
Mini-Hydro Power Plant; A Step To Solving Ghana’s Green Energy Crisis, Promoting Tourism
CSIR Launches Hybrid Maize Seed Production Manual
GAEC Inaugurates Technical Staff Association
Accra Outdoors Climate Action Plan; Outlines Measures To Greenhouse Gas Emissions
CSIR Awaits Approval For Ghana’s First GMO Food Crop
Next Post

10 Naughtiest Vegetables On Earth

  Local News

  • General News
  • Social
  • Health
  • Education
  • Religion
  • Technology
  • Crime & Justice
  • Travel/Tourism
  • Science/Environment


 
 

 

Other Science & Environment Stories

  • Ghanaian Climate Activist Wants Mandatory Climate Change Education For Youth

  • CSIR-SARI Introduces Farmers To Improved Farming Technologies

  • The African Youth Climate Hub Launches An Incubation Program For Green Start-Ups

  • EPA Poised To Safeguard The Environment In 2021

  • Mini-Hydro Power Plant; A Step To Solving Ghana’s Green Energy Crisis, Promoting Tourism

  • CSIR Launches Hybrid Maize Seed Production Manual

  • GAEC Inaugurates Technical Staff Association

  • Accra Outdoors Climate Action Plan; Outlines Measures To Greenhouse Gas Emissions

  • CSIR Awaits Approval For Ghana’s First GMO Food Crop

  • EPA Works Towards Certification Of LPG Operators

 

 
 

Popular Videos

Tima Kunkum Did Not Apply Emotional Intelligence In Her Interview With Delay - Kwasi Aboagye

Asomdwee Park Being Reconstructed...All Thanks To Akufo Addo - Koku

Koku Anyidoho Reveals His Close Relationship With Kwami Sefa Kayi After Birthday Bashing

Counselor Lutterodt Fires Tima Kunkum On Her Interview With Delay

The Moment I Was Convinced Mahama Will Collapse Free SHS - Dr Adutwum Reveals

This Is What Koku Anyidoho Will Do When He Meets Asiedu Nketiah & Mahama

Peace FM Online and Despite Media

peacefmonline.com offers its reading audience with a comprehensive online source for up-to-the-minute news about politics, business, entertainment and other issues in Ghana

Follow us on social media:

Category

  • Home
  • Local News
  • Politics
  • Showbiz
  • Sports
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Trivia
  • Foreign
  • Audio
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Elections
Decision Time
Ghana Election 2020 2016 Elections
Services
Online Radio Audio on Demand Ghana Elections Advertise with Us
Useful Links
Despite Media About Us Contact Us Feedback Form Terms and Conditions Privacy
Our Brands
Despite Media UTV Peace FM Okay FM Hello FM Neat FM Peacefmonline
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Contact
  • Privacy

© 2020 Peacefmonline.com - An online portal owned and managed by Despite Media

  • Home
  • Local News
  • Politics
  • Showbiz
  • Sports
  • Business
  • Articles
  • Trivia
  • Foreign
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Audio
  • Election 2020

© 2020 Peacefmonline.com - An online portal owned and managed by Despite Media