Exoplanet Kepler-19b revolve its star in ways that rape the laws of aperient , hasten up and retard down its scope for no patent reason . The only explanation is a 2nd , hidden planet … pee it the first “ phantom ” exoplanet ever find .
discover by ( and named after ) NASA ’s exoplanet - hound Kepler Space Telescope , Kepler 19 - b is located about 650 light - twelvemonth from Earth , and it completes one orbit every nine days and seven hours , give or take . That “ give or take ” morsel is the job – sometimes it will complete the field five minute of arc faster than it should , and other times it will be five mo slow .
That may not seem like much of a deviation , but that amount of disagreement flies whole in the brass of the laws of planetal move , first formulated by Johannes Kepler – which is strangely appropriate , considering it ’s his namesake that found this problem major planet .
The account for this aperient - defying anomaly is the mien of a nearby companion satellite . The job is that we ’ve yet to recover any unmediated sign of this planet , designate Kepler-19c . That make this invisible exoplanet the first ever that is only know from its gravitative upshot on another satellite . Still , Kepler-19c is in skillful company – it was the gravitational anomalies of Uranus that led to the discovery of Neptune and , albeit somewhat accidentally , Pluto .
Since we ca n’t see Kepler-19c , we do n’t have any substantial musical theme what it actually looks like . We do know that it is n’t massive enough to tower at its star topology , which mean its mass ca n’t be more than about 30 clock time Earth ’s mass , and the fact that we have n’t discover it transiting in front of its star suggests an unusually oblong orbit . Other than that , it ’s anyone ’s guess , as UC Santa Cruz astronomer Daniel Fabrycky explains :
“ Kepler-19c has multiple personalities logical with our data . For instance , it could be a rocky planet on a rotary 5 - day range , or a gas - elephantine planet on an oblong 100 - day orbit . ”
For now , Kepler-19c will have to just persist known as the wandflower ’s only phantom planet . It ’s a temporary title , to be sure , but still not too shabby , as these affair go .
Via theHarvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics . picture by David A. Aguilar ( CFA ) .
AstronomyNeptuneOrbitScience
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