(ORDO NEWS) — The new spectrometer made it possible to refine the orbit of the super-Earth Jansenne, which rotates extremely close to its star.
It seems that the planet formed much further and only eventually migrated to a closer orbit and heated up to incredible temperatures.
The vast majority of known exoplanets are too harsh and in no way adapted for life. However, Jansenne (55 Cancer e) stands out even against this background.
It is twice the size of Earth and orbits the sun-like star 55 Cancer A about 40 light years away. At the same time, the planet’s orbit passes so close to the star that it completes a complete revolution in less than 18 hours.
The radius of the orbit reaches two million kilometers: for comparison, for the Earth it is 147 million kilometers, and for Mercury – 46 million.
Jansenne is always turned to the parent star on one side, and the temperature there jumps from 1000 to 2700 ° C.
But even in the “night” hemisphere, it is not much colder: most likely, the entire surface of the planet is covered with molten lava, and volcanoes do not subside even for a moment.
Astronomers from the Flatiron Institute in New York have managed to figure out how Jansenne turned into such a “hellish” world.
Scientists observed the 55 Cancer A system using the new EXPRES spectrometer installed on the Lowell Observatory’s 4.3-meter telescope.
Moving in orbit, Jansenn passes against the background of a star, which makes it possible to study the planet by changes in its radiation.
This noticeably distinguishes it from the other planets of the system (a total of five are known), which do not overshadow the star in their movement.
Jansenne’s orbit lies almost in the plane of the equator of 55 Cancer A, while the orbits of the other four planets are strongly deviated from it.
This greatly distinguishes the system from our solar system, all of whose planets move almost exactly in the plane of the star’s equator.
Scientists attribute this difference to the presence of a close neighbor in 55 Cancer A. The star is part of the Copernicus binary system , and the red dwarf 55 Cancer B is located next to it.
Apparently, it was its gravity that knocked the planets out of their original plane.
Most likely, Jansenne also formed in a much more distant orbit, but because of the same game of gravitational interactions, she gradually began to move closer and closer to the star.
At the same time, the planet heated up more and more until it became the “hellish” world as we see it today.
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