Six new planets, ranging from “shrunken-Saturns” to “bloated hot Jupiters” and a rare brown dwarf with 60 times the mass of Jupiter have been discovered by a team of astronomers, including those from Oxford University.
The new planets were discovered using the CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and Transits) space telescope, which is operated by the French space agency CNES. The telescope discovers planets called exoplanets, which are outside the solar system, when they “transit” in front of their stars.
“Each of these planets is interesting in its own right, but what is really fascinating is how diverse they are,” said co-investigator Dr Suzanne Aigrain from Oxford University’s department of physics. “Planets are intrinsically complex objects, and we have much to learn about them yet.” Dr Aigrain leads a team of UK researchers at the Universities of Oxford, Exeter and St. Andrews in the CoRoT exoplanet programme.
“Every discovery of an extrasolar planetary system is a new piece in the puzzle of how these systems do form and evolve. The more systems we uncover, the better we can hope to understand the processes at play,” said Magali Deleuil, researcher at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille and head of the CoRoT exoplanet programme.
Among the six newly-discovered stars, CoRoT-8b is moderately small among the previously known transiting exoplanets. Its internal structure should be similar to that of ice giants, like Uranus and Neptune, in the solar system. CoRoT-10b, or the eccentric giant, has such an elongated orbit that passes both very close to and very far away from its star. Scientists have estimated that its surface temperature may increase from 250 to 600°C in the space of 13 earth-days (the length of the year on CoRoT-10b).