Scientists discovered a multi-planet system that had a misaligned star, a first of its kind, using NASA's Kepler Telescope. They believe that the misalignment was caused by a non-orbiting planet.
"When we found this system, it was a major surprise. They didn't form this way," said Daniel Huber, an astronomer of NASA's Ames Research Center, in an interview with the Discovery News.
Scientists are still getting valuable and important data from Kepler telescope although it's already non-operational. Its collections of data are being used to search for other planets outside the solar system and to explore their mother stars.
The findings give scientists an idea how multi-planet systems come about. It could also address answers on how massive planets are found orbiting closer to their mother stars compared to our neighbor Mercury's revolving around the solar system's sun.
Parent stars normally pulsate when they revolve which results to variations in luminosity. The Kepler telescope is very reliable in capturing these fluctuations. Its function is similar to how the space observatory can detect dips in the light emitted by stars because of the planets' transition against Kepler's line of vision.
The misaligned multi-planet system named Kepler -56 is settled around 45 degrees from the orbital plane of the other two planets, which revolve around its parent star every 10 and 20 days.
The team tried to investigate what made the star tilt in that way and found that there was another mass, a stationary third planet or star.
"We think it's responsible for causing this misalignment," Huber said.
The third massive outer planet or star is somewhat in an inclined position on the two inner planets' orbital plane. The team believes that the torque of this third companion is causing the misalignment in the plane where the two planets revolve, on the mother star.
"Some kind of dynamically disruption must have happened a long time ago that caused a planet to migrate so close to its host star," Huber said.
Further studies are being conducted to gather more data about this third planet. The size and orbit information would confirm whether the massive body is a star or a planet.
Further details of this discovery will soon be published in the online journal Science for the week.
