Space & Astronomy

Planet takes 1 million years to orbit its sun

By T.K. Randall
January 26, 2016 ·  16 comments

The planet's orbit is around 140 times wider than that of Pluto. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calcada Located approximately 100 light years from Earth, the planet known as 2MASS J2126−8140 orbits its parent star - a small red dwarf - at a staggering distance of one trillion miles.

The planet is around 11 to 15 times the mass of Jupiter - a size that places it on the boundary between star and planet status - and takes one million Earth years to complete a single orbit."It was quite surprising to us we were able to find something so young and so far away," said Dr Simon Murphy from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. "There's been a handful of wide planet-like systems discovered in the last 5 or 6 years, but this is by far the widest."

The find is particularly interesting as it challenges conventional planet-formation theories and indicates that planets can exist much further out than previous studies had suggested.

"When we look at other stars... they're usually surrounded by a disk of gas and dust from which the planets form, but we've never seen any disks that are even a factor of a hundred as big as the separation between this star and planet," said Dr Murphy.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald | Comments (16)

Tags: Solar System, Star