Astronomers spot a new planet for Beta Pictoris

Astronomers discovered a new planet in orbit of young Milky Way star Beta Pictoris

milky-way-milkyway The Milky Way

Astronomers at the Institute for Planetary sciences and Astrophysics, Grenoble (IPAG) have discovered a second giant planet—3,000 times more massive than Earth— in orbit around the star Beta Pictoris, located just over 63 light years away from Earth.

"We talking about a giant planet about 3,000 times more massive than Earth, situated 2.7 times further from its star than the Earth is from the Sun," said Anne-Marie Lagrange, an astronomer at France's National Centre for Scientific Research and lead author of a study in Nature Astronomy.

The new exoplanet 'B Pictoris c' is nine times Jupiter’s mass and takes about 1,200 days to compete its orbit. Like its big sister B Pictoris B, discovered by Lagrange and her team in 2009, it is a gassy giant. B Pictoris B spins at a breakneck speed of some 25 kilometres per second (90,000 kph).

Located in the southern sky, Beta Pictoris can be seen with naked eye at latitudes between +26° and -90°, and is surrounded by a disk of stellar dust. It is relatively newborn—only 23 million years old. The Sun is more than 4.5 billion years old. Its name is Latin for painter, and is an abbreviation of the older name Equuleus Pictoris (the "painter's easel"). 

astronomy-La-Silla-Observatory-ESO-astronomical-observatory-Chile-sh The astronomers have used very large telescopes at La Silla Observatory in Chile | Shutterstock

B Pictoris c was discovered by analysing 10-years worth of high-resolution data obtained at La Silla Observatory, stationed on the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert, 600 km north of Santiago and at an altitude of 2400 metres.

One of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, La Silla has several telescopes including three telescopes built and operated by the intergovernmental European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Astronomers have become fascinated by the discovery as it enables them to observe a planetary system in the process of forming around its star. Observations show that the two planets are still taking shape.

"To better understand the early stage of formation and evolution, this is probably the best planetary system we know of," Lagrange told AFP.

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