Discovered: Fastest-moving exoplanet system

NASA astronomers have claimed discovery of the fastest-moving exoplanet system consisting of a possible low-mass (red dwarf) star and super-Neptune planet in tow

[Representative image]

Washington: NASA astronomers have claimed discovery of the fastest-moving exoplanet system consisting of a possible low-mass (red dwarf) star and super-Neptune planet in tow.

The fastest star with a planet in tow found so far is moving at a speed of 1.2 million miles per hour or 540 kilometers per second which is nearly double our solar system’s speed through the Milky Way.

“We think this is a so-called super-Neptune world orbiting a low-mass star at a distance that would lie between the orbits of Venus and Earth if it were in our solar system,” said Sean Terry, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"Hypervelocity Star"

Since the star is so feeble, that’s well outside its habitable zone. “If so, it will be the first planet ever found orbiting a hypervelocity star.”

A research paper describing the results, led by Terry, was published in The Astronomical Journal on February 10.

The pair of the planetary objects was first spotted indirectly in 2011 thanks to a chance alignment in a microlensing survey.

A team of scientists combed through archived data from Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) – a collaborative project focused on a microlensing survey conducted using the University of Canterbury Mount John Observatory in New Zealand, in search of light signals that betray the presence of exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, according to NASA.

"Rogue Planet"

The microlensing signals revealed a pair of celestial bodies - one is about 2,300 times heavier than the other.

The discovery team suspected the microlensed objects were either a star about 20 percent as massive as our Sun and a planet roughly 29 times heavier than Earth, or a nearer “rogue” planet about four times Jupiter’s mass with a moon smaller than Earth.

If the pair was a rogue exoplanet and an exomoon, they’d be effectively invisible — dark objects lost in the inky void of space.

The researchers found a strong suspect located about 24,000 light-years away, putting it within the Milky Way’s Galactic bulge.

By comparing the star’s location in 2011 and 2021, they calculated its high speed.

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