A New Massive 'Hot Jupiter' Exoplanet Discovered Orbiting Near A Variable Star

First Posted: Jan 14, 2017 02:16 AM EST
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A new massive "hot Jupiter" exoplanet has been detected orbiting a nearby T Tauri star, also referred to as TAP 26. It is named as TAP 26 b by the astronomers.

The findings of the discovery were published on arXiv.org on Jan. 6, 2017. The discovered exoplanet is about 66 percent more massive than the gaseous planet, Jupiter, and is found orbiting its parent star every 10 days.

The researchers report the detection of a hot Jupiter around TAP 26 using three different methods. These include two using Zeeman-Doppler Imaging (ZDI) and one Gaussian-Process regression (GPR), with a false-alarm probability smaller than 6 10-4.

Phys.org reports that the new "hot Jupiter" has a mass of 1.66 Jupiter masses. It orbits its parent star at almost 0.1 AU. It was classified as a "hot Jupiter" because of its short orbital period.

The researchers also developed surface brightness and magnetic maps of the host star, TAP 26. It shows the visibility of cool spots and warm places totaling up to 12 percent of the stellar surface. They discovered that the temperature of the host star is about 4, 620 K and its maximum V magnitude is equal to 12.16. The team also assume that TAP 26 degenerated its accretion disc the earliest, and its magnetic field began to evolve into a complex topology.

Hot Jupiters, also referred to as roaster planets or Pegasean planets, are exoplanets that have short orbital radii and orbit closely to their parent star. They are physically like Jupiter, which is a gaseous planet. Therefore, these "hot Jupiters" are gas giant planets. They also have high surface temperatures. One of the known "hot Jupiters" that was discovered in 1995 was the 51 Pegasi b, which was the first extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star.

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