Zooniverse volunteers on Exoplanet Explorers have discovered a new 4-planet system.
This new planetary system, 597 light years away in the constellation Aquarius, has dips from four different planets. The planets take only 3 to 13 Earth days to orbit their star. The smallest is just shy of twice Earth’s size, and the largest is 2.74 times as big.
14,000+ volunteers provided over 2 million classifications in just three days to make this discovery possible. The Zooniverse enables everyone to take part in real cutting edge research in many fields across the sciences, humanities, and more. The Zooniverse creates opportunities for you to unlock answers and contribute to real discoveries
The Exoplanet Explorers team, led by Ian Crossfield, Jessie Christiansen, Geert Barentsen, Tom Barclay, and more were also up through much of each night of the event this week, churning through the results. Because the Kepler Space Telescope K2 dataset is so rich, there were dozens of potential candidates to triple check in just 3 days. Not only did our volunteers discover the 4-planet system shown above, but 90 new and true candidate exoplanet.
Here are the best estimates for the system so far:
The star is in the constellation of Aquarius (see if can get the WWT), with ra, dec = 23:15:47.77, -10:50:58.91.
Host star (V=12): 0.8 Rsol, 0.9 Msol. Late G or early K.
Rotates once every 12 days or so.
Distance: 183pc = 597ly.
Sizes: 1.98 Re, 2.03 Re, 2.74 Re, 2.22 Re.
Periods: 3.6d, 5.4d, 8.3d, 12.8d.
Semi-major axii: 0.04 AU, 0.06 AU, 0.08 AU, 0.10 AU.
We predict there may be more planets further out, with similar resonances as the inner planets. The predictions for outer planets are 20d, 30.7d, 47d, etc. (assuming Per_x = 3.56 * 1.538^x.). Planet number 11 would be ~264d, planet 12 ~405d.
There are 73 other previously discovered exoplanet systems with 4 or more planets known.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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