Planets form from material coming together inside huge disks of swirling gas and dust surrounding newborn stars.
Until now, some astronomers believed planets could not exist around stars this massive and this hot. Until this recent discovery, which is located about 325 light years from Earth, no planet has ever been found orbiting a star more than three times the sun's mass. The planet's orbit is about 100 times wider than Jupiter's orbit around our sun and about 560 times wider than Earth's, and researchers say it's the hottest and most massive planet-hosting system found to date. The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile spotted the large mass in the constellation Centaurus, orbiting "b Centauri" - a pair of stars at least six times the mass of the sun, and gravitationally bound to one another. It is one of the most massive planets ever spotted and, based on what researchers know about planet formation, it technically shouldn't exist. The details of the discovered planet, named b Centauri b, were published in Nature this week. This is the most massive and hottest planet-hosting star system found to date.Īstronomers have spotted a planet about 10 times the size of Jupiter orbiting a B-type star that is more than three times as hot as the sun. This artist’s impression shows a close up of the planet b Centauri b, which orbits a binary system with mass at least six times that of the Sun.