This came in yesterday but a lot was going on over here then, so: LHS 3154. This is about a ninth Solar mass... and it has a planet. A big planet, as M×sini = 13.2 Earths; or, 3.5 × 10-4 its own stellar mass. Pending inclination, it could well be as big as Uranus (or as Neptune; but "Uranus" is funnier).
It orbits 3.7 days so, from 51 lightyears away, we might never get to see the planet. The system is making waves on account the research is finding difficult to explain how two bodies like this got so close together. At that distance I assume it's making literal waves on its star.
The mass-ratio isn't inexplicable of itself. Not too far from us, Luhman 16 is a binary of browns. But. These swing around each other at a 3.557 AU semimajor from their barycentre. Clearly LHS 3154 doesn't; Kepler says 0.023 AU.
No comments:
Post a Comment