Astronomers led by Tomas Stolker from Leiden University have discovered the exoplanet HD 135344 Ab, a gas giant 10 times the mass of Jupiter, located 440 light-years away in the constellation Lupus. This planet, orbiting a 12-million-year-old star A in the binary system HD 135344 AB, sheds light on planet formation in such systems. The discovery, made using the SPHERE instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT), raises questions about asynchronous planet formation processes.
The system includes two stars, A and B, with differing protoplanetary disk evolution. Star B’s disk persists, supporting star formation, while Star A’s disk has dissipated, giving way to HD 135344 Ab, which orbits at a distance similar to Uranus. This imbalance suggests uneven development of planetary systems even within a single binary structure.
Four years of observations with SPHERE and the GRAVITY interferometer confirmed the object’s nature, ruling out a background star through precise motion measurements. The planet’s favorable position allowed its faint signal to be detected. Future observations with the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will help study its atmospheric composition, while current data align with models where gravitational interactions in binary systems accelerate planet formation.
Plans include searching for similar exoplanets around other young stars, which could reveal a hidden population of such objects. This discovery broadens our understanding of the diversity of exoplanetary systems and underscores the complexity of their formation, especially in binary star environments where gravitational influences play a key role.
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