‘Styrofoam’ planet promises much for habitable planet search
7 Jun 2017 by Evoluted New Media
Researchers at Lehigh University in the US have discovered a new planet with a styrofoam-like density.
Researchers at Lehigh University in the US have discovered a new planet with a styrofoam-like density.
The planet, KELT-11B, is 320 light years from Earth and could harbour research opportunities to test atmospheres when assessing planets for signs of life.Dr Joshua Pepper, from Lehigh University and lead author, said: “It is highly inflated, so that while it's only a fifth as massive as Jupiter, it is nearly 40 percent larger, making it about as dense as styrofoam, with an extraordinarily large atmosphere.”
KELT-11B’s host star, KELT-11 is extremely bright, allowing for precise measurements of its atmosphere. As such, it provides an invaluable source to develop tools to tests different gases found in exoplanets’ atmospheres. These techniques will, in future, be applied to Earth-like exoplanets that will be searched for using next generation telescopes.
The planet is an extreme version of a gas giant, such as Jupiter or Saturn, but its orbit is very close to KELT11, lasting less than five days. As the star has started using up its nuclear fuel, it has begun the next stage of its evolution into a red giant and will consume the planet within one hundred million years.
Pepper said: “We don't know of any real Earth-like planets or stars for which we can measure their atmospheres, though we expect to discover more in future years. These (giant gas) planets are the gold standards or testbeds for learning how to measure the atmospheres of planets."
The KELT (Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope) uses two robotic telescopes in Arizona and South Africa to scan the night sky. Researchers search for stars that seem to dim at regular intervals – which points to a planet orbiting and eclipsing the sun – before applying techniques to verify the mass of the planet. This programme is designed specifically to discover scientifically valuable planets that orbit very bright stars which are then studied in greater detail by telescopes such as Hubble and Spitzer.
The research is published in The Astronomical Journal.
