Spaceship discovers a gigantic planet 12 times more massive than Jupiter.
And that's not all that Gaia managed to detect.
A new astronomical finding has allowed the identification of an exoplanet named Gaia-4b, located approximately 244 light-years from Earth and having a mass twelve times greater than that of Jupiter. Alongside this exoplanet, an enigmatic brown dwarf has been found, called Gaia-5b, which also orbits on the outskirts of smaller stars than our Sun. In this case, Gaia-5b is situated at a distance of 134 light-years.
The European Space Agency (ESA) was responsible for these discoveries, thanks to its Gaia probe, which has now concluded its scientific operations after exhausting its fuel. Although Gaia's observations ended on January 15, these discoveries mark a precursor to an anticipated release of massive data set to take place next year.
Matthew Standing, a researcher at ESA, expressed that these findings represent only a small sample of the potential future revelations about exoplanets that are expected from the Gaia mission. Currently, the number of confirmed exoplanets has surpassed 5,800, with thousands of candidates under review, representing only a fraction of the planets that could exist in the universe, where it is estimated that there are trillions of stars in hundreds of thousands of galaxies.
Gaia-4b is considered a "super-Jupiter" planet, a relatively cool gas giant that completes its orbit around its star in approximately 570 Earth days. The star it orbits is estimated to have 64% of the Sun's mass, making Gaia-4b one of the largest planets recorded around a low-mass star. The brown dwarf, which did not reach the necessary conditions to become a star, has a mass around 21 times greater than that of Jupiter, equivalent to about 318 times that of Earth.
The technique used by the Gaia probe to detect this exoplanet is based on observing the "wobble" or oscillatory motion of stars, known as astrometry. Since its launch in 2013, Gaia has conducted studies using a pair of optical telescopes to scan the sky. Thanks to its precision, scientists are confident that the data obtained will lead to a multitude of new detections in the future.
The WIYN 3.5-meter telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory, located in Tucson, Arizona, played a key role in conducting follow-up observations that confirmed the initial findings. Guðmundur Stefánsson, the lead author of the study, commented on the rarity of finding massive planets around low-mass stars, adding that when these phenomena occur, they generate a more pronounced "wobble," facilitating detection.
