Astronomers have discovered a new “warm Jupiter” with the help of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satelite (TESS) spacecraft. The exoplanet is called TOI-1859 b and orbits its parent star in a misaligned orbit. This could be due, among other things, to dynamic interactions between the planet and its disk.
The parent star is likely a metal-rich brown dwarf about 30 percent more massive than the Sun. The parent star has a temperature of over 6,000 degrees Celsius. The size and distance of TOI-1859 b from the star (0.33 AU) indicate that it is a “warm Jupiter.”
Orbiting in 63.48 days
TESS surveys about 200,000 brightest stars near the Sun to look for passing exoplanets. So far, about 6,600 possible exoplanets have been identified – but only 333 of those have been confirmed. The team, led by Jiayin Dong of Pennsylvania State University (PSU), has established one more. The newly discovered planet was observed over four years and had a radius of about 0.86 Jupiter radii. It orbits its host every 63.48 days.
Astronomers plan to conduct another study to verify the origin of its original orbit. They also say that further studies of warm Jupiters such as TOI-1859 b are needed to determine whether a star’s effective temperature affects the exoplanet’s orbital alignment.
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