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| (Observatorium W. M. Keck/Adam Makarenko) |
NEWSLINE PAPER,- Astronomers have been trying to figure out whether our solar system is unique when compared to other stars and planets orbiting it.
To find out, they took a big step to solve the cosmic mystery.
An international team then spent three years analyzing, measuring, and counting the masses of 120 exoplanets and six candidate planets scattered in the northern sky.
As a result, the catalogue has been able to detail how strange and exotic the exoplanets are.
The findings are detailed in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement.
Quoting Gizmodo, Friday (24/5/2024) Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in collaboration with W.M. Keck Observatory in Maunakea, Hawaii, the newly released catalogue shows a variety of planets orbiting different types of stars.
"With this information, we can begin to answer questions about the position of our Solar System compared to other planetary systems," Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist at Riverside at the University of California and lead researcher of the TESS-Keck Survey, said in a statement.
One of the weird exoplanets in this catalogue is TOI-1824. It has an incredibly high density and is 19 times the mass of the Earth.
"Planets of similar size typically have between 6 and 12 times the mass of the Earth," said Joseph Murphy, one of the study's authors.
The peculiarity of these exoplanets is that they have a Earth-like core surrounded by a very thin and hydrogen-dominated atmosphere, or they may also have a water-rich core under a steam atmosphere.
Another example of an extreme exoplanet is TOI-1798c, which orbits very close to its parent star.
That makes it capable of completing one orbit in less than 12 hours, which means that the planet orbits its star so fast that a year on that planet takes less than half a Earth day.
The team also discovered two new planets that orbit a Sun-like star.
It took the planet 26 days to orbit its star, while its massive neighbour, Saturn, took it 227 days to run around the same star.
(Newsline Paper Teams)