An unconfirmed planet orbits a young sun-like star.
Astronomers from the University of Arizona in the USA have observed a new red dwarf star called 2MASS J04124068+2438157. It turned out to be surrounded by a protoplanetary disk consisting of two separate rings. Space writes that some of the matter appears to have been “stolen” by an exoplanet similar in size to Saturn.
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The star 2MASS J04124068+2438157 is a red dwarf star located 485 light-years from us. This star is similar in size to the Sun, but has half its mass. It is also a very young object for the age of the Sun. If our star is 4.6 billion years old, this red dwarf is only 4.7 million years old.
Previous observations of the star have shown that it may be surrounded by a protoplanetary disk of gas and dust from which planets could form. To clarify the situation, American scientists decided to make a new observation using the ALMA radio telescope.
Scientists have indeed discovered a huge disk surrounding the star, with a total size of about 18.8 billion km. And it’s much larger than the size of similar discs that scientists have observed in other red dwarfs.
But further observations revealed an interesting fact. It turned out that the protoplanetary disk consists of two parts, namely two rings of gas and dust.
The closest ring to the star has a width of 840 thousand km and is located 10.5 billion km from the red dwarf. The distant ring is 1.27 million km wide and is 16 billion km from its star.
Scientists believe that some of the gas and dust between these two rings entered the formation of an exoplanet similar in size to Saturn. So scientists believe that a planet orbits a red dwarf at a distance of about 13.5 billion km from the star. For comparison, this is “our” Saturn 10 times farther from the Sun and 90 times further from Earth.
Until now, astronomers can’t say with certainty whether an exoplanet is really here, but their data points to this fact. Astronomers plan to make observations with the Webb Space Telescope to confirm the existence of “another” Saturn in this star system.
Meanwhile, as mentioned earlier FocusThis observatory now observes very distant galaxies that can only be seen with the help of a phenomenon such as gravitational lensing. The Webb Space Telescope has captured a space seahorse in a new space image.
Returning to our solar system, it is worth remembering that the Webb telescope also observes planets in near space. For example, the observatory recently took a stunning view of the rings of Uranus. This ice giant also has rings, though not as visible as I wrote earlier. Focus.
Moreover Focus He wrote that scientists believe they have discovered the so-called strange star, which is composed mainly of quark-like particles. These stars are theoretically believed to exist, but scientists have found no evidence of this fact.
Source: Focus
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