Multiple Sunrises And Sunsets In Newly Dicovered 16 Million-Year-Old Planet

A planet as huge as Jupiter and orbits two times as far out as Pluto around three of its suns was spotted by scientists. The strange looking, 16-million-year-old planet is located 320 light years away in the Centaurus constellation, scientists said.

Lead author and discoverer Kevin Wagner said he's thrilled "to have seen such a beautiful part of nature that nobody else has seen," according to uanews.arizona.edu.

The planet is located about 320 light years from the Earth in the Centaurus constellation. According to uanews.arizona.edu, HD 131399Ab is about 16 million years old, which makes it one of the youngest exoplanets to be discovered and one of the very few directly imaged planets to date. Experts also said that the temperature in the exoplanet is about 850 Kelvin (about 1,070 degrees Fahrenheit or 580 degrees Celsius).

"HD 131399Ab is one of the few exoplanets that have been directly imaged, and it's the first one in such an interesting dynamical configuration," said Daniel Apai, an assistant professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences who leads a research group dedicated to finding and observing exoplanets at the UA.

With the help of an instrument the European Southern Observatory calls Very Large Telescope; astronomers were able to spot this exotic planet with a triple star system. However, while the first exoplanet with triple star system orbits closer to one star than the other two, HD 131399Ab orbits around all three of its suns. Astronomers didn't think it was possible for a planet like this to survive, until now.

"I'd venture to say this is the weirdest orbit of any exoplanet we've ever found," Kevin Wagner, an astronomer at the University of Arizona and lead author on the study published in today's Science, told Gizmodo. "We know of no other planet in a configuration like this."

Even though astronomers have discovered thousands of different exoplanets by transit photometry, only a few of those have been directly seen. Astronomers explained that direct imaging is like trying to see a firefly from a lighthouse 1,000 miles away, something close to impossible.

Astronomers also said that the planet takes about 600 years to orbit its main sun. Even though the planet was discovered a year ago, astronomers have only seen a tiny portion of its elliptical orbit. USA Today also reported Apai explaining that scientists' can only guess that the planet mainly circles around the biggest and brightest star in the system, labelled only, star A.

"In the few other systems where planets and multiple stars co-exist, the planets have usually been seen very close to one star and very far from the other, therefore the planet's orbit was always dominated by one star," Apai said.

Should researchers make a mistake and find that its orbit is longer, "it could swing to the other stars and back, an orbit which in most cases would lead to the planet being slingshotted out of the system," he continued.

Wagner also said that there is a possibility for the planet to harbor life if it has moons, just as Jupiter's moons might in our solar system.