{"id":20460,"date":"2019-12-04T13:00:43","date_gmt":"2019-12-04T18:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=20460"},"modified":"2019-12-04T12:05:16","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T17:05:16","slug":"eso-first-giant-planet-around-white-dwarf-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=20460","title":{"rendered":"ESO: First Giant Planet around White Dwarf Found"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest news from the European Southern Observatory (ESO)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

First Giant Planet around White Dwarf Found<\/strong><\/a>
\nESO observations indicate the Neptune-like exoplanet is evaporating<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
This illustration shows the white dwarf WDJ0914+1914 and its Neptune-like exoplanet. Since the icy giant orbits the hot white dwarf at close range, the extreme ultraviolet radiation from the star strips away the planet\u2019s atmosphere. While most of this stripped gas escapes, some of it swirls into a disc, itself accreting onto the white dwarf.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Researchers using ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope<\/a> [VLT] have, for the first time, found evidence of a giant planet associated with a white dwarf star. The planet orbits the hot white dwarf, the remnant of a Sun-like star, at close range, causing its atmosphere to be stripped away and form a disc of gas around the star. This unique system hints at what our own Solar System might look like in the distant future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of those chance discoveries,\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

says researcher Boris G\u00e4nsicke, from the University of Warwick in the UK, who led the study, published today in Nature.<\/p>\n

The team had inspected around 7000 white dwarfs observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey<\/a> and found one to be unlike any other. By analysing subtle variations in the light from the star, they found traces of chemical elements in amounts that scientists had never before observed at a white dwarf.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that there had to be something exceptional going on in this system, and speculated that it may be related to some type of planetary remnant.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

To get a better idea of the properties of this unusual star, named WDJ0914+1914, the team analysed it with the X-shooter<\/a> instrument on ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope<\/a> in the Chilean Atacama Desert. These follow-up observations confirmed the presence of hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur associated with the white dwarf. By studying the fine details in the spectra taken by ESO\u2019s X-shooter, the team discovered that these elements were in a disc of gas swirling into the white dwarf, and not coming from the star itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took a few weeks of very hard thinking to figure out that the only way to make such a disc is the evaporation of a giant planet,\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

says Matthias Schreiber from the University of Valparaiso in Chile, who computed the past and future evolution of this system.<\/p>\n