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Lightest ever Jupiter-like hidden exoplanet was uncovered

22 February 2023 15:25 (UTC +04:00)

Astronomers have discovered the lightest exoplanet to date around a star named AF Leporis, APA reports citing Republic World.

The discovery was made possible by the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Chile-based Very Large Telescope (VLT) which was being used by two independent groups of astronomers. According to ESO, the astronomers used the VLT's SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research) instrument which helped confirm the telltale sign of a planet hiding near the star AF Leporis.

Observations through the SPHERE instrument have revealed that the exoplanet, although similar to Jupiter is more massive than the gas giant, and it orbits its star from a distance equivalent to that between Saturn and the Sun in our solar system. Moreover, it resides about 87 light-years away around a star that has roughly the same mass, size and temperature as the Sun. According to astronomers, the Leporis star system, which is only 24 million years old and is about 200 times younger than the Sun, also has a debris belt with similar characteristics as the Kuiper belt in our solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune. They believe that an extensive study of this system can shed light on the formation and evolution of our own solar system.