Exploring alien worlds in solar systems is an important task.
Astronomers ’tools have come a long way since the beginning exoplanet Seen in the 1990s, but hard to find: finding little ones hundreds of years away, the better their host. hoku. Not surprisingly, at times, exoplanet observers become flukes.
That is the result of the Earth HD 131399 Ab, scientists one idea get three days. When astronomers tried to look at the Earth again, they found that it was very different and far behind compared to an exoplanet. Now, astronomers who first saw the earth are returning to their observations.
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The star system HD 131399 is located about 350 light -years from Earth in the Centaurus galaxy. The star system has three stars: an A-shaped white star about two times the size of our sun, which the stars think HD 131399 Ab is orbits, and two smaller partners.
Science first notice the so -called HD 131399 Ab was seen about six years ago. The Jupiter-size newfound world received a lot of attention at the time, partly due to the appreciation of the newfound planet with three days. From the astronomer’s point of view, the information is interesting because it is accurately photographed: rather than seeing the earth as dark or the motion of its large star, the stars knew it accurately. Scientists with their telescopes.
But as the years went by and astronomers tried to look at the system, they in stock Nothing is right. More importantly, scientists have analyzed the parallax of objects, how much they move behind the star as seen in different parts of the Earth’s orbit. It is known that independent astronomers do not see the same distance between the earth and the star system Earth; Recent measurements by the world’s earliest scientists have confirmed this.
In other words, what scientists think is Earth is something that moves very fast backwards, much farther from Earth than the HD 131399 system.
“It’s probably a very red star – maybe a red giant, and someone with a disk.” Kevin Wagner, an astronomer at the University of Arizona and one of the HD 131399 Ab’s seers, told Space.com. That red color would make the star look like the earth, he knew.
Also, the movement of this long star is very erratic, so it is similar to the nearest star system. This difference indicates something that made the star stronger – perhaps it was expelled from its host system or saw a close encounter with another system, scientists believe.
“Each one is different on their own,” Wagner told Space.com. “The combination of these low -level features of the latter is what leads us to be mistaken for a world.”
Wagner said he didn’t see any other times when a red star or a speeding person was mistaken for a nearby planet – but, as the HD 131399 Ab episode shows, there is the possibility.
The research was described in a paper published Friday (April 15) in the journal Science.
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