Well, over the years, astronomers have found many hot Jupiters. Unlike the Solar System’s giant planets, as HD83443b grew to maturity, it must have migrated inwards to end up close to its host star. Those ices allow them to rapidly grow, gaining enough mass to shroud themselves in huge atmospheres. Gas giants such as Jupiter begin their lives far from their host star where ices are abundant. Planets such as the “hot Jupiter”, HD83443b, are particularly interesting to astronomers as they’re unlike anything close to home. Color code: purple = HD83443c, green = Earth, red = Mars, blue = Jupiter and yellow = Saturn. If HD83443c was in the Solar System, it would approach the Sun almost to the orbit of Mars, then swing outwards, ending up between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus, before falling Sunward once again. While the planets in the Solar System follow near-circular orbits, HD83443c follows a much more elongated path reminiscent of comets in our Solar System. Since HD83443c’s “year” is so long, we needed more than two decades of observations to confirm its existence – by tracking a single lap around its host star.īut what’s really unusual is the eccentricity of its orbit. This world, HD83443c, takes more than 22 years to orbit its host star, and is some 200 times more distant than its hellish sibling. In recent years, we’ve been conducting this work at the University of Southern Queensland’s Mt Kent Observatory.īy combining our observations with others, we discovered a strange new planet in the system, which we describe in a paper published last month. HD83443b is a “hot Jupiter”: a giant gas planet skimming the surface of its host star (which is a little smaller and cooler than the Sun), and completing each lap in less than three Earth days!įor two decades since its discovery, we have continued to monitor the HD83443’s movements. This planet, HD83443b, was as massive as the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter.īut that’s where the similarities ended.
Using the 3.9 metre Anglo-Australian Telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, researchers discovered a planet orbiting the star HD83443. They were looking for evidence of those stars wobbling back and forth under the influence of unseen planetary companions. The story of the HD83443 system begins in the late 20th century, when astronomers began obsessively observing stars similar to the Sun. It doesn’t sound much like home, does it? Yet that’s what we found. Then imagine another giant planet farther out, larger than Jupiter, moving on a distant and highly elongated orbit which makes it look more like a comet than a traditional planet.
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