A UF researcher has reported the discovery of a planetary system that contains five possible planets.
Department of astronomy postdoctoral researcher Darin Ragozzine said the NASA Kepler space telescope discovered the planets.
Currently, researchers can only see the shadow of the planets. The shadow allows researchers to understand the orbit and how long it takes the planets to go around the star.
“I’m sure that the outer four are planets, and I strongly believe the innermost one is a planet, but I’m not quite as sure,” he said.
Each of the possible planets is between 1.2 to 2.5 times the size of Earth.
“This has been on our radar for some time. Only recently has the data been long enough to come to some of the conclusions from Darin’s study,” said Eric Ford, an associate professor for the department of astronomy.
Ragozzine said it is unique the outer four planets’ years are synchronized so all four planets turn back to the same configuration about every 191 days. This indicates that in the past, the planets could’ve moved and their orbits could’ve changed slightly.
“Sometimes the planets’ shadows come early, and sometimes they come late. This is due to the planets pushing and pulling on each other with their own gravity,” he said.
The system is compact compared to other systems. Ragozzine said the outermost planet only gets one-twelfth of the distance that Earth gets from the sun.
“Understanding this system will help people studying planet formation,” he said, “why it is that some systems end up looking like our solar system, and other systems end up looking like these ultracompact planetary systems.”
