A team of Canadian astrophysicists has discovered a 'super-Jupiter' sized planet near the massive star Kappa Andromedae and is expected to have 13 times more mass than that of Jupiter and an orbit larger than that of Neptune.
The object may represent the first new observed exoplanet system in approximately four years. The host star 'Kappa', around which the planet revolves has a mass 2.5 times that of the Sun and this makes the star the highest mass star to host a planet ever.
According to the reports of Astrophysical Journal Letters the star can be seen with naked eyes in the constellation Andromeda situated at a distance of about 170 light years from the earth.
"Our team identified a faint object located very close to Kappa Andromedae in January that looks much like other young, massive directly imaged planets but does not look like a star," said study co-author Thayne Currie, post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto.
The researchers discovered the planet during an infrared imaging search carried out as part of the Strategic Explorations of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru (SEEDS) programme using the Subaru telescope located in Hawaii, according to a Toronto statement.
"Kappa Andromedae moves fast across the sky so it will appear to change position relative to more distant, background objects," Currie says.
"When we re-observed it in July at multiple wavelengths, we saw the faint object again, located at about the same position as it was in January.
This suggests that it is bound to the star and not an unrelated background object. Labelled by the researchers as Kappa And b, it could be the first direct rendering of an exoplanet in two years and of a new exoplanet system in almost four years, thus ending the ongoing drought in the area.
-With inputs from IANS
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