June 25, 1999
Instead, it is "almost certainly a normal reddened star," says Keith S. Noll of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Details appear in the June 26 issue of SCIENCE NEWS, a weekly news magazine.
Terebey told SCIENCE NEWS that she would not talk to reporters until next month. By then, she said, she will have had time to assimilate comments from the scientists who had seen her new data and to submit a research article to a peer-reviewed journal.
According to several scientists who attended her presentations, Terebey acknowledged that the spectrum she has now obtained of the faint object, dubbed TMR-1C, reveals that it does not contain water vapor, which should be present if it were a planet with a temperature lower than 2,500 K. Because water is abundant in the cosmos, its absence is a reliable indicator of a high temperature, Noll explains.
Terebey presented her spectrum, taken at the Keck telescopes atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea, on June 9 at a meeting on giant planets and cool stars in Flagstaff, Ariz., and on June 17 at a Gordon Research Conference on the origin of the solar system in Henneker, N.H. According to astronomers at the two meetings, Terebey acknowledged that the spectrum could be that of a star. However, she also suggested that the object might be a failed star, known as a brown dwarf, or a planet that is warmer and possibly younger than she had first thought.
Terebey showed that the spectrum of an ordinary, low-mass star, partly obscured by foreground dust, roughly matches her spectrum of TMR-1C, according to astronomers who heard her Flagstaff presentation.
This "implies strongly" that TMR-1C is just a background star, says Mark S. Marley of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, an organizer of the Flagstaff meeting. "It is a real stretch of the data to claim anything else."
"In my opinion, it is a waste of time and bad science to keep pursuing this idea [of a planet] when a much simpler and more likely alternative is supported by all the evidence," says Noll. "Extrasolar planets are one of current astronomy's holy grails, and so there is strong temptation to see them where one want to see them. But in this case, the data seems to be saying quite clearly that this extrasolar planet was an illusion."
Full article in the June 26 SCIENCE NEWS is available at:
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/6_26_99/fob1.htm.
NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
The discovery, made by Susan Terebey of the Extrasolar Research Corporation in Pasadena, CA, and her team using Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), further challenges conventional theories about the birth and evolution of planets, and offers new insights into the formation of our own Solar System.
Located in the sky within a star-forming region in the constellation Taurus, the object, called TMR-1C, appears to lie at the end of a strange filament of light that suggests it has apparently been flung away from the vicinity of a newly forming pair of binary stars.
At a distance of 450 light-years, the same distance as the newly formed stars, the candidate protoplanet would be ten thousand times less luminous than the Sun. If the object is a few hundred thousand years old, the same age as the newly formed star system which appears to have ejected it, then it is estimated to be 2-3 times the mass of Jupiter, the largest gas giant planet in our Solar System.
Also possible is that the object is up to ten million years old, the same age as other young stars nearby, in which case it may be a giant protoplanet or a brown dwarf star. A brown dwarf star is a small star that has failed to sustain nuclear fusion.
The candidate protoplanet is now 130 billion miles from the parent stars and predicted to be hurtling into interstellar space at speeds up to 20,000 miles per hour (10 kilometers/sec) -- destined to forever drift among the Milky Way's starry population.
Hubble researchers estimate the odds at two percent that the object is instead a chance background star.
"If the results are confirmed, this discovery could be telling us gas giant planets are easy to build. It seems unlikely for us to happen to catch one flung out by the stars unless gas giant planets are common in young binary systems," said Terebey.
"The results don't directly tell us about the presence of any terrestrial planets, like Earth," she adds. "However, we believe gas giants do influence the formation of much smaller rocky planets."
Current models predict that very young giant planets are still warm from gravitational contraction and formation processes. This makes them relatively bright in infrared light compared to old giant planets such as Jupiter. Even so, young planets are difficult to find in new solar systems because the glare of the central star drowns out their feeble glow. Young planets ejected from binary systems would therefore represent a unique opportunity to study extrasolar planets with current astronomical technology.
The discovery also challenges conventional theories that predict gas giant planets take millions of years to coagulate from dust in space. Instead, it favors more recent ideas that large, low-density planets may condense out of gas very quickly, at the same time their parent star does.
"This observation pushes back the clock on planet formation and offers short time scales which allow us to see how things form. This provides valuable new clues to the origin of our Solar System," says Terebey.
The candidate protoplanet was accidentally discovered by Terebey and colleagues while studying Hubble infrared images of newly formed protostars in a molecular cloud in Taurus. The exquisite sensitivity and sharpness of NICMOS clearly revealed the object's pinpoint image. However, it might have been dismissed as a background star if not for the presence of a bizarre 130-billion-mile-long filamentary structure that bridges the space between the binary pair and the candidate protoplanet.
"I said to myself, 'This is really weird, what in the world could it be?'" recalls Terebey. She speculates it could be a tunnel the runaway object burrowed through a dust cloud surrounding the stars. This created a "light tube" which channels light from the stars deep inside their dusty cocoon - like a light beam traveling through a length of fiber optic cable.
This brought Terebey to the tantalizing possibility that the planet had been flung into deep space by a gravitational "slingshot" effect from its parent stars. This could have happened if the planet's orbit allowed it to rob momentum from the stars and pick up so much speed that it escaped the system, similar to the way spacecraft perform gravitational "slingshot" maneuvers to pick up speed by flying close by a planet.
"We know that many triple star systems eventually toss out the lowest mass star. And we can predict the speed at which the object should be moving, based on the separation of the binary stars," said Terebey.
Future observations call for images taken at a later date, to confirm the object's predicted movement across the sky. In addition, the spectrum of the object will tell whether the object is a background star, brown dwarf, or something whose spectrum is less easy to predict, such as a giant protoplanet.
"We will just have to wait and see if future observations confirm this picture," said Terebey. "However it turns out, we have come to appreciate that protoplanet ejection by young binary stars ought to happen, and it offers a new way to search for giant planets."
"These future observations will be critical in verifying that this object is truly a planet and not a brown dwarf," said Dr. Ed Weiler, Director of the Origins Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. "We are sharing this preliminary data with the public at a very early stage in the research process because of its potential importance and because of the compelling nature of the image. If the planet interpretation stands up to the careful scrutiny of future observations, it could turn out to be the most important discovery by Hubble in its 8 year history".
The members of the research team include Susan Terebey (Extrasolar Research Corp.), Dave Van Buren, Deborah L. Padgett, Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, CA (JPL), Terry Hancock (Extrasolar Research Corp.), and Michael Brundage, JPL.
The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA) for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
A photo and caption are available via the World-Wide Web
PHOTO CAPTION:
The brightest objects in the image are the binary protostars, which illuminate an extended cloud of gas and dust (image center) from which the stars formed. So much dust surrounds these protostars that they are virtually invisible at optical wavelengths. However, near-infrared light penetrates the overlying dust, revealing the newborn stars within. The faint multicolor cross extending from the neighborhood of the binary is an artifact produced when HST observes bright stars.
At lower left there is a point of light many times fainter than the binary. Theoretical calculations indicate that this companion is much too dim to be an ordinary star; instead, a hot young protoplanet several times the mass of Jupiter is consistent with the observed brightness. The candidate protoplanet appears at a distance of 130 billion miles from the binary (1400 times the Earth's distance from the Sun). A bright streak of nebulosity extends from the binary toward the faint companion, possibly indicating that the protoplanet was ejected from the binary system.
Current models predict that very young giant planets are still warm from gravitational contraction and formation processes, with temperatures as high as a few thousand degrees Fahrenheit. This makes them relatively bright in infrared light compared to old giant planets such as Jupiter. Even so, young planets are difficult to find in new solar systems because the glare of the central star drowns out their feeble glow. Young planets ejected from binary systems would therefore represent a unique opportunity to study extrasolar planets with current astronomical technology.
The image was taken on August 4, 1997 with the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) in three wavelengths (1.6, 1.9, and 2.05 microns). The members of the research team include Susan Terebey (Extrasolar Research Corp.), Dave Van Buren, Deborah L. Padgett, Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, CA (JPL), Terry Hancock (Extrasolar Research Corp.), and Michael Brundage, JPL.
Image Credit: Susan Terebey (Extrasolar Research Corp.), and NASA
FAST FACTS:
Star Name: TMR-1 (Taurus Molecular Ring, star 1 - binary) Planet name: TMR-1C Constellation: Taurus Coordinates: 4h39m15s RA, +25d53m Dec. Distance: 450 light-years Field of view: 19 arseconds
ASTROFILE:
In some double-star systems, however, astronomers predict that planet formation is anything but orderly. In this free-for-all environment, a planet can be created very quickly from the contraction of a clump of gas and dust. But it doesn't stay with its host stars for long. Three's a crowd in the chaotic world of double-star systems. The three objects engage in a Wild West-type saloon brawl, with the planet getting booted out of the barroom window by its more massive companions. Unwilling to suffer another beating, the planet leaves town in a hurry.
Life in some double-star systems can be that brutal, as images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show of a possible young gas giant planet being ejected from an infant double-star system (TMR-1) in a large stellar nursery in the nearby constellation Taurus. These stunning images are the first snapshots of a possible planet around a star. Astronomers call them extrasolar planets.
"This is unbelievably exciting, seeing a possible extrasolar planet for the first time," says astrophysicist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "This is a major, unprecedented observation. It is as important as the first indirect detection of an extrasolar planet was."
Until this Hubble sighting, all of the detected planets have been orbiting middle-aged stars. The Hubble observation is the first peek at a young planet. Studying young planets is important to understanding how planets are created. The images show that planet formation can occur much faster than astronomers first believed. They support an emerging view that not all planets form slowly and have permanent neighborhoods. Conventional theory holds that first dust and then gas is built up over about 10 million years to create gas giant planets. However, the gas giant planet in the Hubble image evidently took no more than 300,000 years to form. The only way to make a gas giant planet that quickly, Boss says, is to form it directly out of the rotating disk of dust and gas. Such giant planets would then form in a manner similar to the more massive brown dwarfs, which form out of gas and dust, but at an earlier phase. (Brown dwarfs began as star "wanna be's." But they never got quite massive enough to ignite nuclear reactions in their cores, which make stars shine.)
Hubble's gas giant is roughly the same age as the parent stars, about 300,000 years old. Gas giant planets are many hundreds of times heavier than Earth. Earth is small and rocky and is called a terrestrial planet. Because of their larger sizes, gas giants are the only planets that have been discovered so far.
The astrophysicist, however, thinks that other gas giants, like Jupiter, might still have formed from the conventional, old-fashioned way.
"It takes about 10,000 to 100,000 years for a planet to be ejected from a two-star system like this one," Boss says. "Who knows? Maybe this double star (in the Hubble image) has kicked out a gas giant before this one. This is just one possibility that astronomers will look for when they begin to do the follow-up observations on this major discovery."
The wandering nature of the gas giant in Taurus also reinforces the idea that some gas giants migrate. The planet in the Hubble image traveled out of its star system, but earlier detections of extrasolar planets pinpointed gas giants that apparently moved closer to their stars, because of gravitational interactions between the planet and the disk or with other planets in the system.
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