Mastodawn

David Ondřich Apr 17, 2025

Did you find the #StarWars world, Tatooine, and its companion stars impressive? Then check this! 😉

ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has discovered the first planet that not only orbits a pair of stars but does so at an angle of 90 degrees.

Both stars are brown dwarfs, objects bigger than gas-giant planets but too small to be proper stars. When tracking their orbits, astronomers found that the orbits themselves change over time. After carefully ruling out other explanations, they concluded that the gravitational tug of a planet in a polar orbit was the only way to explain the motion of the brown dwarfs.

📷 ESO/L. Calçada

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science

"Big surprise": astronomers find planet in perpendicular orbit around pair of stars

Astronomers have found a planet that orbits at an angle of 90 degrees around a rare pair of peculiar stars. This is the first time we have strong evidence for one of these ‘polar planets’ orbiting a stellar pair. The surprise discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).