Researchers from New York University have developed a new way to measure a star's internal properties, which can help them better understand nearby exoplanets.
More than 10 years ago, scientists identified an exoplanets in the orbit of the star HD 52265. The HD 52265 is approximately 92 light years away from the Earth and is nearly 20 percent bigger than our Sun. Since its discovery researchers have used the star as a model to find out more about other stars and other planetary systems.
Earlier, scientists measured properties of a star like its radius, mass and age by analyzing the star's brightness and color. However, these properties were not enough to fully understand more about exoplanets that are located in the star's orbit.
For this new study, the researchers examined HD 52265 yet again, but this time using a new method known as asteroseismology. This method uses the star's surface oscillations to determine its internal properties. Using this technique researchers were, for the first time, able to measure the star's internal rotation.
Along with the new technique, researchers also used the COROT space telescope, part of a space mission led by the French Space Agency (CNES) and the European Space Agency (ESA), to detect tiny fluctuations in the intensity of starlight caused by starquakes.
Researchers said that the new findings could help them provide a definitive conclusion whether the space rock in the star's orbit is actually an exoplanet. Though previous studies have confirmed that it is indeed an exoplanet, some people have raised doubts that it might actually be a brown dwarf.
Brown dwarfs are substellar objects too low in mass to sustain hydrogen-1 fusion reactions in their cores. This makes them too small to be a star but too big to be a planet.
After determining the rotation axis of HD 52265, researchers were able to accurately define the mass of the nearby exoplanets, which they found to be roughly twice that of the planet Jupiter, making it too small to be a brown star.
