Question: An international team of astronomers found planet closely orbiting a white dwarf. Consider the following facts-
I. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and retired Spitzer Space Telescope were used to discover it.
II. The new planet is as large as Jupiter
III. It has been named as WD 1856 b
Which one of the statements given above is incorrect?
a) (i)
b) (ii)
c) (iii)
d) None
Answer: (d)
Related Facts:-
• An international team of astronomers planet found closely orbiting a white dwarf.
• They got it by using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and retired Spitzer Space Telescope.
• They have reported that the planet may be the first intact planet found closely orbiting a white dwarf.
• Discovery details about this planet in the Sept. 17 issue of Journal Nature.
• It should be known that white dwarf is dense leftover of a Sun-like star, only 40% of the size of Earth.
• This newly discovered planet called WD 1856 b, as large as Jupiter is about seven times larger than the white dwarf, named WD 1856+534.
• The TESS satellite spotted WD 1856 b about 80 light-years away in the northern constellation Draco.
• The planet makes round white dwarf in every 34 hours, more than 60 times faster than Mercury orbits our Sun.
• It orbits a cool, quiet white dwarf, which is a distant member of a triple star system.
• that is roughly 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) across, may be up to 10 billion years old, and
• Andrew Vanderburg, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison informed that the Planet WD 1856 b somehow got very close to its white dwarf and managed to stay in one piece.
• It is now well known fact that the white dwarf creation process destroys nearby planets, and anything that later gets too close is usually torn apart by the star’s immense gravity.
• Astronomers till now unable to explain about, how WD 1856 b arrived at its current location without annihilating in white dwarf formation process of this white dwarf.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS):-
• The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is designed to discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest dwarf stars in the sky.
• In its prime mission, a two-year survey of the solar neighborhood, TESS monitored the brightness of stars for periodic drops caused by planet transits.
• The prime mission ended on July 4, 2020 and TESS is now in an extended mission.
• TESS is finding planets ranging from small, rocky worlds to giant planets, showcasing the diversity of planets in the galaxy.
• TESS monitors large swaths of the sky, called sectors, for nearly a month at a time. This long gaze allows the satellite to find exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system.
• TESS do it capturing changes in stellar brightness caused when a planet crosses in front of, or transits, its star.