Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets outside the Solar System.The Milky WayInside. What do the planets outside the Milky Way look like?
Outside the Milky Way, the planet is located in the spiral galaxy Messier 51. Due to its unique appearance, it is commonly known as the Whirlpool Galaxy.
Using NASA’s Lunar X – ray Observatory, astronomers have for the first time captured the phenomenon of planets passing through stars outside the Milky Way.
This interesting result opens up an explorationExoplanetIn the new window, you can search for exoplanets farther away than before.
The paper’s lead author, Rozanne de Stefano, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement: “We are trying to find planetary candidates in the X – ray wavelength, to open a new field for finding others.
So far, everything astronomers have discovered in the Milky WayExoplanetIt is less than 3,000 light-years from Earth. The exoplanet in the spiral galaxy discovered at this time is about 28 million light-years away, thousands of times farther away than any other exoplanet in the Milky Way.
This new observation utilizes the transit phenomenon. In such a case, a planet will block light from certain stars before passing through a star, causing a temporary decrease in brightness. Scientists have used visible light to observe this transit phenomenon and have discovered thousands of planets.
The research team, led by De Stefano, used innovative X-rays invisible to the naked eye, hoping to detect transits in the X-ray band.
X-ray-emitting celestial bodies usually contain a neutron star or black hole that pulls gas from a co-star close to its orbit. Objects near a neutron star or black hole become overheated and glow on X-rays. Because the area that produces the brightest X-rays is so small, the planet passing in front of it can block most or all of the X-rays. In this way, the X-rays will disappear completely, so the transit phenomenon is easier to detect. Exoplanets can be detected at greater distances by the transit phenomenon of X-rays compared to the current transit phenomenon in the visible light band.
The research team used this method to find exoplanets in the binary star system M51-ULS-1, located on M51. This binary star system contains a black hole or neutron star that orbits a co-star 20 times the mass of the Sun.
The X-ray transmission they detected using lunar data lasted about three hours, during which time the X-ray radiation intensity decreased to zero.
Based on this and other information, the researchers estimate that the exoplanet candidate on M51-ULS-1 will be approximately the same size as Saturn, orbiting a neutron star or black hole about twice the orbital distance between Saturn and the Sun.
Using invisible X-rays with the naked eye, the research team succeeded in making significant scientific progress. It is conceivable that many of the mysteries of the universe are hidden in the environment, invisible to human eyes.
Although the research results are very important, the results are still difficult to further examine and analyze. The main challenge is that the planet’s large orbital distance will not pass through its binary star system in about 70 years, meaning it will not be visible for decades to come.
“Unfortunately, to confirm that we see a planet, we may have to wait decades to see another transit.” The University of California, Berkeley, co-author of the paper on Santa Cruz Nia Imara, said in a statement above. Since we are not sure how long it will take to orbit, we cannot know the exact time of the observation.
The research team tried to rule out other causes of X-ray blurring, such as gas and dust. The team believes that this is not a viable explanation as the X-ray characteristics observed in the M51-ULS-1 do not match the characteristics of the gas or dust layer. Conversely, the transition of an exoplanet matches the data.
“We know we’m making an exciting and bold statement, so we hope other astronomers look at it very carefully.” Julia Berndsson, a collaborator at Princeton University in the USA, said in the above statement, “We think we have a strong argument. How does this process work in science.”
If the planet were in this binary star system, it would likely have experienced a turbulent history: it could have survived a supernova explosion caused by a neutron star or black hole in the binary star system. The future of this planet could be in jeopardy: at some point, the co-star of the binary system could explode into a supernova, resulting in high levels of radiation that could explode the planet.
The paper was published in the October 25 issue of Nature Astronomy.
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