Newly Discovered Planemos Orbit Around Each Other
Posted on August 17, 2006
ESO scientists have discovered a pair of exoplanets that orbit around each other and not a star. ESO astronomers say the planets belong to a class of planet-like objects called planemos. The drawing pictured on the right is an interpretation by ESO artists of what the planemos might look like. A BBC article explains how the planemos are formed.
The pair belongs to what some astronomers believe is a new class of planet-like objects floating through space; so-called planetary mass objects, or "planemos", which are not bound to stars.The original ESO press release can be found here.They appear to have been forged from a contracting gas cloud, in a similar way to stars, but are much too cool to be true stars.
And while they have similar masses to many of the giant planets discovered beyond our Solar System (the larger weighs in at 14 times the mass of Jupiter and the other is about seven times more massive), they are not thought to be true planets either.
"We are resisting the temptation to call it a 'double planet' because this pair probably didn't form the way that planets in our Solar System did," said co-researcher Valentin Ivanov of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Santiago, Chile.
Image: ESO