Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 10 submissions in the queue.
posted by janrinok on Friday March 06 2015, @12:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-little-we-know dept.

The Los Angeles Times reports on research published in The Astronomical Journal.

Astronomers have discovered a giant planet with four suns just 125 light-years from Earth. The planet is at least 10 times as big as Jupiter and scientists say it probably has no actual surface to stand on. But, if you could fly a spacecraft into its atmosphere and look up, you would see one primary sun, a bright red dot, and another star shining more brightly than Venus does in our night sky. ...

In a paper published in the Astronomical Journal, the researchers describe Ari 30 as a pair of binary systems. A large planet travels around the star known as 30 Ari B, taking about 355 days to complete its orbit. The newly discovered star is locked in a gravitational dance with 30 Ari B from a distance of less than 30 astronomical units away. (One astronomical unit is the distance between the sun and the Earth).

About 1,670 astronomical units away lie another pair of stars in a system known as 30 Ari A. The two binary systems orbit a central mass that lies in between them.

Only one other planet in a quadruple star system has been discovered before, but Roberts said that more may soon be detected.

[Editor's Note: For comparison purposes consider that Neptune orbits the Sun at an average distance of 30.1 astronomical units. See, too, this table of distances from the Sun in AU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit#Examples.]

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2015, @03:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2015, @03:12PM (#153848)

    Unfortunately the radiation bands around the planet will likely render every satellite inhospitable. It would provide a surface to see the stars in the system but you'd either need thick radiation shielding or it'd be a one-way trip.

  • (Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday March 06 2015, @04:59PM

    by Foobar Bazbot (37) on Friday March 06 2015, @04:59PM (#153876) Journal

    Well, at over 130 ly distant, the only presently conceivable methods of getting there in one lifetime (generation ships being a one-way trip by definition) would require some serious radiation shielding anyhow.