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A team of astronomers led by Alexander Bohn, from the University of Leiden (Netherlands), has obtained images of the gigantic exoplanet YSES 2b, which is located 360 light years from Earth. The gaseous planet orbits a long distance star similar to the sun, YSES 2, which is inconsistent with current theories of planet formation.
For RT
YSES 2b is six times more massive than Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, and 110 times farther from its star than Earth from the sun. YSES 2 is similar in parameters to the sun, but it is much younger: it is only 14 million years old, while the sun is 4.5 billion years old.
The discovery was made as part of the Young Suns Exoplanet Study (YSES) and with the support of the Very Large Telescope complex in Chile and equipped with SPHERE, a high-contrast spectropolarimetric instrument that provides direct images of exoplanets. The YSES 2 star was sighted on April 30, 2018 and December 8, 2020.
The great distances between a star and a planet in such a young system do not fit into either of the two best-known models of gas giant formation. If the planet had formed in its current location, away from the star and due to the growth of the core, it could not be as massive due to the lack of matter in its disk of gas and dust. And if it was created by the so-called gravitational instability in the planetary disk, then it doesn’t seem to be heavy enough.
It is also possible that the planet formed near the star, through growth of the core, and then migrated outward. However, this scenario requires the gravitational influence of a second planet, which has not been found so far.
“By exploring more Jupiter-like exoplanets in the near future, we will learn more about the processes of gas giant formation around sun-like stars,” Bohn said. The new findings are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.