Sunday, October 18, 2015

Exoplanets in Quadruple Systems



New measurements are being conducted on a quadruple star system with the lowest mass. These measurements are supporting a theory that large gas planets form in the same way as stars.

Exoplanets have many different types of characteristics and vary greatly. There were many different theories that suggested these systems were created by growing from cores that were close to host stars.

However, another theory arose suggesting that these exoplanets were created in the same way as stars. In a recent finding, there is evidence that this might be the case. 2M0441+2301 AabBab is a quadruple system in which a OSIRIS instrument at the Keck Observatory was used to measure the first ever resolved spectra of this system which confirmed its properties.

This particular system is a hierarchical quadruple system which has a pair of binary systems which are close by that orbit each other at huge distances of at least 1800 AU. The new measurements show that the first of the binary pair consists of a brown dwarf, which is in between the size of a small star and a giant planet that emits infrared radiation, and a low mass star. The second of the pair also contains a brown dwarf, which has a mass of 19 times the mass of jupiter, as well as a companion which is around ten times the mass of jupiter. This makes the system's mass add up to about 0.26 solar masses which makes it the lowest mass quadruple system discovered.

What makes the  structure of this system interesting is how it was formed from the collapse of a molecular cloud core as well as the different masses of each binary pair. The companion's mass in the second pair suggests that it is possible to form this companion from a cloud-fragmentation pathway which leads to an explanation for the formation of exoplanets in this way.


Sources:
http://aasnova.org/2015/10/16/a-four-star-lightweight/
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question62.html

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