Over the past few years thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers and VLT images were the largest and most close to us exoplanets. To date, there are about thousands of such objects. The vast number refers to the so-called hot-hot-Neptune and Jupiter, and is a large gas giant, heated to a high temperature.
GJ 504 in the constellation Virgo is a young Sun-like luminary of spectral class G0V, age of the entire solar system is less than 160 million years. Astronomers were able to open GJ 504b by the method of direct visualization, it is easy to see the planet in infrared telescope and take pictures of it.
Visualization provides information on the luminosity, temperature, atmosphere, and the planet#39;s orbit, - says head of research Masayuki Kudzuhara. - But most of the extrasolar planets are too faint luminosity, and so close to its star, it attempts to fix them with ground-based telescopes like trying to photograph the fireflies near the spotlight. However, the Subaru telescope allows you to record exoplanets even with a weak luminosity, using a complex system of adaptive optics that compensates for the blurring effect.
The project of the Strategic Research exoplanets and disks, which started in 2009 and a five-year, planned to acquire images of planets outside the solar system, and protoplanetary disks surrounding the nearest star. The project is headed Motohayd Tamura of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
As for GJ 504b, which is four times the mass of Jupiter, that, according to the shooting, she, unlike the other gas giants, is shifted to the blue part of the spectrum, indicating the almost complete absence of clouds. In our solar system giants usually completely wrapped up a powerful cloud pokrovom.Esli we could fly to the planet, to our eyes appeared to glow from the heat of the world, painted in dark cherry, almost purple, color, - said Michael MakElvayn, the Center for Space Flight Goddard. - Our infrared cameras show that the color blue more than any other observable planets, which may indicate a small amount of clouds in the atmosphere.
Temperature of GJ 504b is high enough (it is equal to 510 Kelvin, or 237 degrees Celsius) is not because it is close to the star (like the so-called hot Jupiters), but because of her young age. Luminaries from the parent planet removed by 43.5 astronomical units, which is approximately equal to the distance between Pluto and the Sun. Thus, although almost GJ 504 is a twin of our sun, the giant planet formed in that area, where our solar system is not at all the planets except Pluto, which, by weight, yielding Earth four times, was stripped of planetary status and moved into the category large asteroids (Plutoid).
The pictures show that GJ 504b is located much further imposed the orbit of Neptune, which was taken as the most remote frontier potential of planets in systems of yellow dwarfs. The distance from the planet to its star is up to nine times the distance between the Sun and Jupiter. If you follow the traditional theory of planets, the latter does not provide for the formation of massive planets at such a distance from the sun.
Of course, this is not the first such case. However, until recently, it was about the formation of planets around the blue giants that are much more massive and have more extensive protoplanetary disks, which makes possible the formation of planets at large distances from the star. In this case, however, the mechanism of formation of the planet was clearly different.
Its discovery means that we have to seriously consider alternative theories of planets. Or to re-evaluate some of the basic assumptions of the current dominant theory - says one of the study authors, Markus Janson of Princeton University (USA).
In addition, the study of the system GJ504, which by its characteristics are very similar to ours, but much younger than her, will help to imagine what it was at the dawn of the solar system misty youth.
