If you don’t think the sun is shining enough on Earth, you can always move to PH1, a newly discovered exoplanet that has no less than four stars. It has been discovered by a team of amateur astronomers, in collaboration with experts from Yale University (USA), who in an article to be published in the magazineAstrophysical Journal explain that PH1 revolves around a binary star system that, in turn, is orbited by a second pair of distant stars, resulting in an “extremely rare” planetary configuration.
Astronomers have called this newly discovered world“circumbinary system”. “Circumbinary planets are the extremes of planet formation,” said Schwamb, who pointed out that “the discovery of these systems forces experts to return to the drawing board to understand how these planets can be born and dynamically evolve in such difficult environments. “
PH1 is agas giant with a radius around 6.2 times that of Earth. And it’s dense, with a mass about 170 times that of Earth. It revolves around its stars about every 138 days. Beyond the orbit of the planet, at a distance of about 1,000 astronomical units (the distance between the Earth and the Sun), the second pair of stars that orbit the system is located.
It is the first planet identified by the volunteer programPlanet Hunters, which uses data from NASA’s Kepler space probe, specially designed to search for planetary signals. “This unique system could have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for the keen eyes of the public,” said Schwamb, highlighting the importance ofcitizen collaboration in the “hunting” of planets.
