SPACE/COSMOS
Galactic warming: The 'car engine-like' effect heating our Milky Way
image:
An artist’s impression of the Milky Way, with two of its satellite galaxies – the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud – in the bottom left.
view moreCredit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, S. Payne-Wardenaar, L. McCallum et al (2025), Kevinmloch, F. Fraternali.
Our Milky Way's halo of hot gas is warmer to the 'south' than the 'north' because of an internal combustion engine-like effect that is compressing the gas like a piston, a new study has found.
Computer simulations reveal that the Large Magellanic Cloud – a satellite galaxy below, or on the south side, of our own – attracts the Milky Way, causing gas in the southern half of the halo to compress and heat up.
This, a team of scientists led by the University of Groningen say, explains why the southern half of the halo is up to 12 per cent warmer than the northern part above the Milky Way's disc, a discrepancy which was measured in 2024 by the X-ray observatory eROSITA mounted on a German-Russian space telescope.
Their findings are published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Many galaxies, including our own, are surrounded by a vast sphere of thin and warm matter, also known as a halo of hot gas.
Scientists estimate that our Milky Way's gaseous halo has a mass of 100 billion solar masses, meaning there is more matter in the halo than in the galactic disc. The halo, which has a temperature of about 2 million degrees kelvin (a few hundred times hotter than the surface of the Sun), is the 'building material' of the much more compact and cooler disc of gas and stars – including the Sun – at the centre of it.
The Milky Way in the computer simulations is made of three 'components': the rotating disc with relatively cold gas, the much warmer gas around it and a large halo consisting of dark matter. The so-called hydrodynamic simulation calculates movements of these three components caused by the gravitational attraction of the Magellanic Clouds, which are passing close by the Milky Way, over the course of about one billion years.
The results show that the Milky Way's cold disc is currently moving towards the satellite galaxies at about 40 kilometres per second because of the gravity of the Large Magellanic Cloud. In this process, the Milky Way compresses the gas at the bottom and the material heats up 13 to 20 per cent, according to the calculations.
The simulation also shows that the temperature difference between the northern and southern parts of the halo has arisen in the last 100 million years.
"We saw fairly quickly in the simulations that there was a warming effect," said Filippo Fraternali, professor of gas dynamics and the evolution of galaxies at the University of Groningen.
"It took a little longer before we realised what is going on here – namely the compression of gas like in the piston of an internal combustion engine, which then heats up to make the southern side of our Milky Way's halo warmer."
The simulations may also explain more asymmetries around the Milky Way, according to the researchers. For example, many more so-called high-velocity clouds are seen on the north side of the Milky Way than on the south side. These regions of gas – usually about 100 times cooler than the surrounding material – move around the galaxy at highly anomalous speeds.
"The lower pressure of the surrounding gas may make it easier for these clouds to form and survive there," Fraternali added.
Initially, the researchers were not looking for what they discovered. The simulations had already been published in 2019 as part of an attempt to find an explanation for gas moving around the Magellanic Clouds, among other things. At that time, the temperature difference had not yet been found.
"Typically, computer models are designed to explain certain observations. It is remarkable these simulations already contained the temperature asymmetry before it was found. It makes this result extra robust," Fraternali said.
Co-author Else Starkenburg, associate professor at the University of Groningen, added: "Our explanation for the temperature asymmetry measured by eROSITA is based on simple and well-understood physical processes as we also find them in, for example, combustion engines.
"That gives the result extra elegance."
ENDS
Images & captions
Caption: An artist’s impression of the Milky Way, with two of its satellite galaxies – the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud – in the bottom left.
Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, S. Payne-Wardenaar, L. McCallum et al (2025), Kevinmloch, F. Fraternali.
Further information
The paper ‘Temperature asymmetry in the Milky Way’s hot circumgalactic medium induced by the Magellanic Clouds’by A. Oprea et al. has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stag319.
Notes for editors
About the Royal Astronomical Society
The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.
The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.
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Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Article Title
‘Temperature asymmetry in the Milky Way’s hot circumgalactic medium induced by the Magellanic Clouds’
Article Publication Date
26-Mar-2026
AI approach uncovers dozens of hidden planets in NASA’s TESS data
University of Warwick
image:
This is an artist's impression of a unique type of exoplanet discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope. The planet is so close it to its star that it completes an orbit in 10.5 hours. The planet is only 750,000 miles from the star, or 1/130th the distance between Earth and the Sun.
The Jupiter-sized planet orbits an unnamed red dwarf star that lies in the direction of the galactic center; the exact stellar distance is unknown. Hubble detected the planet in a survey that identified 16 Jupiter-sized planets in short-period, edge-on orbits (as viewed from Earth) that pass in front of their parent stars. Hubble could not see the planets, but measured the dimming of starlight as the planets passed in front of their stars.
This illustration presents a purely speculative view of what such a "hot Jupiter" might look like. It could have a powerful magnetic field that traps charged particles from the star. These particles create glowing auroral rings around the planet's magnetic poles. A powerful magnetic flux tube links the planet and star. This enhances stellar activity and triggers powerful flares. A powerful stellar wind creates a bowshock around the planet. The planet's atmosphere seethes at 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Schaller (for STScI) - https://science.nasa.gov/asset/hubble/artists-impression-of-an-ultra-short-period-planet/ - This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
view moreCredit: NASA, ESA, and A. Schaller (for STScI)
Astronomers at the University of Warwick have validated over 100 exoplanets, including 31 newly detected planets, using a new artificial intelligence tool applied to data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a space mission that monitors the sky for the subtle dimming of starlight caused when planets pass in front of their host stars.
Published in MNRAS, the team applied their newly developed AI pipeline called RAVEN to observations of over 2.2 million stars collected during TESS’s first four years of operations. They focused on finding planets that orbit close to their stars, completing an orbit in less than 16 days, providing the most accurate assessment of how common these short-period worlds are.
“Using our newly developed RAVEN pipeline, we were able to validate 118 new planets, and over 2,000 high-quality planet candidates, nearly 1,000 of them entirely new,” said first author Dr Marina Lafarga Magro, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Warwick. “This represents one of the best characterised samples of close in planets and will help us identify the most promising systems for future study.”
Among the newly validated planets are several especially valuable populations, including:
Ultra-short-period planets, orbiting their stars in less than 24 hours
‘Neptunian desert’ planets, a rare class found in a region where theory predicts planets should be scarce
Close orbiting multi-planet systems, including previously unknown planetary pairs around the same star
RAVEN’s edge
Modern planet-hunting missions routinely identify thousands of possible planets (candidates), but confirming which signals are real, and understanding how common different types of planets are, remains a major challenge with the current methods.
"The challenge lies in identifying if the dimming is indeed caused by a planet in orbit around the star or by something else, like eclipsing binary stars, which is what RAVEN tries to answer. Its strength stems from our carefully created dataset of hundreds of thousands of realistically simulated planets and other astrophysical events that can masquerade as planets. We trained machine learning models to identify patterns in the data that can tell us the type of event we have detected, something that AI models excel at.” said Warwick’s Dr Andreas Hadjigeorghiou, who led the development of the pipeline.
“In addition, RAVEN is designed to handle the whole process in one go, from detecting the signal, to vetting it with machine learning and statistically validating it. This gives the pipeline an additional edge over contemporary tools that only focus on specific parts of the workflow".
Dr David Armstrong, Associate Professor at Warwick and senior co-author on the RAVEN studies, added: “RAVEN allows us to analyse enormous datasets consistently and objectively. Because the pipeline is well-tested and carefully validated, this is not just a list of potential planets — it is also reliable enough use as a sample to map the prevalence of distinct types of planets around Sun-like stars.”
Planetary Prevalences
With this well-characterised set of validated planets, the team was able to move beyond individual discoveries and study the population of close-in exoplanets in detail. In a companion MNRAS study, they measured how frequently close orbiting planets occur around Sun-like stars; mapping results across orbital period and planet size with unprecedented detail.
They found that around 9–10% of Sun-like stars host a close-in planet, which was consistent with NASA’s Kepler mission - a space telescope that previously measured how common planets are around other stars, but RAVEN had uncertainties up to ten times smaller.
The study also provides the first direct measurement of ‘Neptunian desert’ planets, showing they occur around just 0.08% of Sun-like stars.
“For the first time, we can put a precise number on just how empty this ‘desert’ is,” said Dr Kaiming Cui, Postdoctoral Researcher at Warwick and first author of the population study. “These measurements show that TESS can now match, and in some cases surpass, Kepler for studying planetary populations.”
A foundation for future discoveries
Together, these studies demonstrate how large astronomical data and new AI developments go hand in hand, generating new discoveries while stress-testing AI on difficult research problems as well as transforming both planet discovery and planetary population science.
The team has also released interactive tools and catalogues, allowing other researchers to explore the results and identify promising targets for future observations with ground-based telescopes and upcoming missions such as ESA’s PLATO.
ENDS
Notes to Editors
This research was supported by UKRI funding under the Horizons Frontier research guarantee program – INNATE. reference EP/X027562/1
The three RAVEN papers are:
Automatic search for transiting planets in TESS-SPOC FFIs with RAVEN: Over 100 newly validated planets and over 2000 vetted candidates DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stag512
Demographics of Close-In TESS Exoplanets Orbiting FGK Main-sequence Stars, MNRAS (2026) DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stag022
RAVEN: RAnking and Validation of ExoplaNets. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17645
RAVEN explainer
RAVEN is an automated planet vetting and validation framework designed to solve one of the biggest bottlenecks in modern astronomy: turning vast volumes of space telescope data into reliable discoveries. It scans observations/data from millions of stars for the tiny dips in brightness caused by planets passing in front of their host stars, uses artificial intelligence models trained on realistic simulations to reject false positives such as binary stars and instrumental noise, and then statistically validates the strongest signals. Crucially, it also measures which types of planets are easiest, and hardest, to detect and correctly classify, allowing scientists to correct for hidden biases. This means RAVEN does not just validate new worlds faster; it produces cleaner datasets that can be used to answer bigger questions about how common distinct types of planets really are.
About the University of Warwick
Founded in 1965, the University of Warwick is a world-leading institution known for its commitment to era-defining innovation across research and education. A connected ecosystem of staff, students and alumni, the University fosters transformative learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, and bold industry partnerships across state-of-the-art facilities in the UK and global satellite hubs. Here, spirited thinkers push boundaries, experiment, and challenge convention to create a better world.
An exampler of a multi-planet close orbiting system - the Kepler-11 System
Kepler-11 is a sun-like star around which six planets orbit. At times, two or more planets pass in front of the star at once, as shown in this artist’s conception of a simultaneous transit of three planets observed by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft on Aug. 26, 2010.
Image credit: NASA/Tim Pyle - https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/kepler-11-system/ - This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
Credit
NASA/Tim Pyle
Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Automatic search for transiting planets in TESS-SPOC FFIs with RAVEN: Over 100 newly validated planets and over 2000 vetted candidates
Article Publication Date
24-Mar-2026
Study: New explanation for unique ‘negative superhump’ features of deep-space binary star systems
UNLV-led team of astrophysicists resolves decades-old conundrum with new theory on mechanisms driving periodic brightness variations in cataclysmic variable star systems.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
LAS VEGAS – March 23, 2026 – New UNLV-led research is helping to unravel clues to a cosmic mystery that has eluded scientists for decades.
Cataclysmic variables (CVs) are binary star systems in which primary stars – incredibly dense and compact white dwarfs – accumulate material from nearby companion stars. The material spirals in towards the white dwarf through what is known as an accretion disk. These deep space systems are responsible for a number of cosmic phenomena, including sudden bursts of light known as classical novae that temporarily appear to resemble new stars before fading away over time.
Modern astronomical instruments have enabled scientists to understand many of the mechanisms that drive CVs. But one phenomenon – periodic brightness variations referred to as superhumps – has proven more difficult to explain. First identified roughly 50 years ago, these brightness modulations appear for periods either slightly longer (positive superhumps) or shorter (negative superhumps) than the duration of the system’s orbital time frame.
In a new paper published March 23 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of astrophysicists from UNLV and the Space Telescope Science Institute offers a new explanation for the occurrence of negative superhumps in CVs.
For decades, the prevailing theory for their formation was that the disk of collected material around the white dwarf is both circular and tilted to the binary orbit, causing it to precess backwards in a motion similar to that of a spinning top. The problem with this theory, the UNLV team says, is that there hasn’t been a strong explanation for how the disk could be tilted or what could sustain the tilt.
Instead, the team proposes in the new paper that the accretion disk can become eccentric – in other words, it becomes elongated rather than circular. The eccentric accretion disk gradually rotates its orbit over time through a process known as retrograde apsidal precession. And, as a result of pressure, it naturally produces negative superhumps without requiring a disk tilt.
“Cataclysmic variables have been visible to the human eye for hundreds of years, and what began as observations of a blinking light in the sky were later revealed to be one star eating another star,” said David Vallet, study lead author and postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UNLV. “While observations of superhumps date back to the 1970s, we believe the eccentric disk model clears up prevailing concerns of the tilted disk model and explains the prevalence of negative superhumps across a wide range of binary star masses.”
In certain systems, this new model shows that disk expansion may create conditions in the inner and outer portions of the disk to allow for the temporary coexistence of positive and negative superhumps. According to researchers, the theory may also explain how positive superhumps can occur in high mass ratio systems if the disk density builds up in the outer parts of the disk.
These areas will form the focus of the team’s future research, which will involve using large numerical simulations to model an evolving disk and match a predicted light curve to the observations.
“Every piece of this puzzle increases our knowledge of mechanisms that drive the evolution of our universe,” said Vallet.
Publication Details
“Negative superhumps in cataclysmic variables driven by retrograde apsidal disk precession” was published March 23 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Co-authors include David Vallet, Rebecca Martin, and Stephen Lepp with the Nevada Center for Astrophysics at UNLV; and Stephen Lubow with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Martin and Lepp are professors in the UNLV Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Vallet is a postdoctoral researcher.
Journal
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Negative Superhumps in Cataclysmic Variables Driven by Retrograde Apsidal Disk Precession
Article Publication Date
23-Mar-2026
NASA grant supports Rice research on next-generation lunar dating technology
Rice University professor Bidong Zhang has received a grant to develop next-generation lunar radiometric dating techniques that will acquire more accurate ages for lunar samples. This project is supported by $2.54 million over a three-year funding period from the NASA Laboratory Analysis of Returned Samples program.
“Lunar chronology is essential for understanding the Moon, its cosmological origin and history,” Zhang said. “This grant will allow us to develop next-generation radiometric dating techniques to acquire accurate, precise ages for lunar rocks and from that provide insight into how our closest celestial neighbor formed and evolved.”
While several methods for lunar radiometric dating exist, they are often destructive, labor-intensive, difficult to accurately acquire ages or are not adaptable to all lunar rock types. Zhang and his team will focus on developing an easier-to-use, minimally destructive tool kit that is useful for a broad range of sample types brought back to Earth by NASA’s future lunar missions.
“This grant will support a few key goals of the Artemis Program, which aims to bring new lunar samples from the far side of the Moon,” Zhang said. “The new radiometric dating techniques will be useful for both earth- and planetary-focused chemistry research.”
Rice has a long history of space research, including NASA collaborations dating back to the founding of the government agency in 1958. The university has maintained a leadership role in advancing space science and technology ever since, through initiatives such as the Rice Space Institute, a robust physics and astronomy research program and deep, rich partnerships across the space community.
Imaging the Moon’s interior with fiber-optics
ETH Zurich
image:
Researcher Simone Probst demonstrates the experimental setup used to test fibre-optic DAS cables, which measure vibrations to image subsurface structures.
view moreCredit: Peter Rüegg / ETH Zurich
In brief
- Scientists propose fibre-optic cables as dense, lightweight seismic sensors on the Moon.
- Laser-based Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) technology could map lunar interiors using vibrations from Moonquakes, lunar landings, and meteorites etc.
- The Moon’s conditions make this method especially effective for future exploration.
It was 1972 when the last Apollo astronauts deployed seismic instruments on the Moon. The Apollo instruments operated until 1977 delivering a dataset consisting of thousands of moonquakes. Today’s scientists still rely on that data, but it offers only a glimpse into the Moon’s interior.
This is why researchers at ETH Zurich, led by Johan Robertsson, Professor of Applied Geophysics at ETH Zurich, and international partners including the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA, are assessing a novel approach to studying the inner geological structure of the Moon. Instead of deploying heavy seismometers one by one, a rover could unroll kilometres of light-weight fibre-optic cable across the lunar surface. The cables would act like thousands of tiny sensors detecting tremors from moonquakes, meteorites, and lunar landings. This is demonstrated in their study just published in the journal Earth and Space Science.
Using light to detect moonquakes
Using a “Distributed Acoustic Sensing” (DAS) technology, researchers turned a fibre-optic cable into a long-range sensor. Lasers in DAS send rapid pulses of light through a cable and tiny imperfections in the fibre scatter light back to an instrument called an interrogator. By analysing the returning light, scientists can detect seismic waves by how the cable stretches or vibrates.
The timing of the reflected signals reveals where along the cable the motion occurred allowing a single fibre, approximately the width of a human hair, to function like thousands of evenly spaced sensors. Even a cable a few kilometres long can record signals at a higher spatial resolution than traditional seismic networks. On Earth, DAS already monitors earthquakes, landslides, and even whale movements using ocean telecom cables.
Researchers report other use cases beyond quake detection. “Vibrations generated by spacecraft landings and take-offs could serve as active seismic sources, allowing fibre-optic cables to image the Moon’s sub-surface structures in a similar way to medical ultrasound,” says Simone Probst, lead author, and doctoral researcher in Robertsson's group.
The cables could also detect how much lunar dust is stirred up by rocket exhaust during landings. This information could help mission planners better understand and mitigate dust-related risks for future missions.
Fibre-optics may work better on the Moon
The Moon may be ideal for fibre-optic sensing. Probst and Carly Donahue, a former Senior Scientist at ETH Zurich, conducted shaker tests at the Los Alamos Lab using crushed basalt – a similar material to the fine powdery lunar soil called “regolith.” The lab tests showed promising results with thicker cables recording seismic signals nearly as well when lying in direct, continuous contact with the surface as when buried in the basalt.
“Understanding how cables perform under varying conditions is essential,” says Probst, lead author of the study. “We are complementing our experiments with computer simulations to study how cables couple with the ground, and how this interaction is shaped by lunar gravity.”
Researchers found that while wind weakens signals of cables on Earth, the Moon’s lack of atmosphere could make it possible to roll out cables on the surface instead of burying them underground. Simulations also model how cables respond to seismic waves under lunar conditions.
Learning more about lava tubes or water resources
“Fibre-optic sensing could dramatically expand our understanding of the Moon – its interior, lava tubes, landing sites, and water resources,” says Johan Robertsson, senior author of the study. “Long cables could also pick up signals of tidal stresses caused by Earth’s gravity allowing scientists better understand how seismic waves travel through the Moon. It has even been proposed that DAS could detect gravitational waves exciting the normal modes of the Moon.”
For the ETH Zurich team, the research is part of a broader effort to develop next-generation sensing technologies. If successful, fibre-optic networks could stretch across the lunar surface – turning the Moon into one of the most densely instrumented seismic laboratories beyond Earth.
Journal
Earth and Space Science
Method of Research
Computational simulation/modeling
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Controlled Source DAS Coupling Tests: Implications for Unburied Deployment on the Moon and Earth
Article Publication Date
17-Mar-2026
A Solar System in the making? Two planets spotted forming in disc around young star
ESO
image:
These images, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows a planetary system being born around the young star WISPIT 2. The star is surrounded by a disc of gas and dust –– the raw material out of which planets form and grow. In 2025 a team of astronomers detected a young planet, called WISPIT 2b, carving out a gap in the disc around the star. Now the same team has confirmed the presence of a second planet, WISPIT 2c, orbiting even closer to the star, as shown in the inset.
Both planets are gas giants, similar to Jupiter. WISPIT 2b is almost five times as massive as Jupiter, and orbits the star at a distance 60 times larger than the separation between Earth and the Sun. WISPIT 2c is twice as massive as 2b and orbits the star four times closer.
The images shown here were taken with the SPHERE instrument at the VLT. SPHERE can correct the blur caused by atmospheric turbulence, as well as block the light of the central star, revealing the faint disc and planets around it in great detail. A different instrument, GRAVITY+ on the VLT Interferometer, was also used in the discovery, helping confirm the planetary nature of the observed object.
view moreCredit: ESO/C. Lawlor, R. F. van Capelleveen et al.
Astronomers have observed two planets forming in the disc around a young star named WISPIT 2. Having previously detected one planet, the team have now employed European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescopes to confirm the presence of another. These observations, and the unique structure of the disc around the star, indicate that the WISPIT 2 system could resemble a young Solar System.
“WISPIT 2 is the best look into our own past that we have to date,” says Chloe Lawlor, PhD student at the University of Galway, Ireland, and lead author of the study published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The system is only the second known, after PDS 70, where two planets have been directly observed in the process of forming around their host star. Unlike PDS 70, however, WISPIT 2 has a very extended planet-forming disc with distinctive gaps and rings. "These structures suggest that more planets are currently forming, which we will eventually detect,” Lawlor says.
"WISPIT 2 gives us a critical laboratory not just to observe the formation of a single planet but an entire planetary system," says Christian Ginski, study co-author and researcher at the University of Galway. With such observations, astronomers aim to better understand how baby planetary systems develop into mature ones, like our own.
The first newborn planet found in the system — named WISPIT 2b — was detected last year, with a mass almost five times that of Jupiter and orbiting the central star at around 60 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. “This detection of a new world in formation really showed the amazing potential of our current instrumentation,” said Richelle van Capelleveen, PhD student at Leiden Observatory, the Netherlands, and leader of the previous study. After an additional object was identified near the star [1], measurements made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the VLT Interferometer (VLTI) confirmed its planetary nature. The new planet — WISPIT 2c — is four times closer to the central star and is twice as massive as WISPIT 2b. Both planets are gas giants, like the outer planets in our Solar System.
To confirm the existence of WISPIT 2c the team employed the SPHERE instrument on ESO's VLT, which captured an image of the object. The team then used the GRAVITY+ instrument on the VLTI to confirm that the object was indeed a planet. "Critically our study made use of the recent upgrade to GRAVITY+ without which we would not have been able to get such a clear detection of the planet so close to its star," says Guillaume Bourdarot, study co-author and researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany.
Both planets in WISPIT 2 appear in clear gaps within the disc of dust and gas circling the young star. These gaps result from each planet's development: particles in the disc accumulate, their gravity pulling in more material until an embryo planet forms. The remaining material, around each gap, creates distinctive dust rings in the disc.
Besides the gaps that the two planets were found in, there is at least one smaller gap farther out in the WISPIT 2 disc. "We suspect there may be a third planet carving out this gap" says Lawlor, "potentially of Saturn mass owing to the gap’s being much narrower and shallower". The team are eager to make follow-up observations, with Ginski noting that “with ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope, we may be able to directly image such a planet.”
Notes
[1] The first hints of the presence of a second planet came from observations made with the University of Arizona's MagAO-X on the 6.5-metre Magellan Telescopes in Chile and the University of Virginia's LMIRcam on the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer in the USA.
More information
This research was presented in a paper to appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The team is composed of C. Lawlor, (School of Natural Sciences, Centre for Astronomy and Ryan Institute, University of Galway, Ireland [Galway]), R. F. van Capelleveen (Leiden Observatory, Leiden University,The Netherlands [Leiden]), G. Bourdarot (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany [MPE]), C. Ginski (Galway and Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics, Department of Astronomy, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA [CAAO]), M. A. Kenworthy (Leiden), T. Stolker (Leiden), L. Close (CAAO), A. J. Bohn (Leiden), F. Eisenhauer (MPE and Department of Physics, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany), P. Garcia (Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Portugal and CENTRA – Centro de AstrofÃsica e Gravitação, IST, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal), S. F. Honig (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, United Kingdom), J. Kammerer (European Southern Observatory, Garching Germany), L. Kreidberg (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany), S. Lacour (LIRA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université de Paris, Meudon, France), J.-B. Le Bouquin (Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), E. Mamajek (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA), M. Nowak (LIRA), T. Paumard (LIRA), C. Straubmeier (1st Institute of Physics, University of Cologne, Germany), N. van der Marel (Leiden) and the exoGRAVITY Collaboration.
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration for astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal, ESO will host and operate the south array of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.
Links
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Journal
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
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