A Milky Way-surveying spacecraft found a planet 12 times more massive than Jupiter, along with a brown dwarf, each distantly orbiting stars smaller than the sun.
Scientists have dubbed the exoplanet, a world well outside our solar system, Gaia-4b. The brown dwarf, not quite a planet or a star, is Gaia-5b. Respectively, they are 244 and 134 light-years away.
The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, which has recently retired because it’s running out of fuel, is responsible for the discoveries. Both enormous celestial objects were made official after confirmation from other instruments. Though Gaia concluded science observations on Jan. 15, these results are an intriguing tease to a vast data release from the mission anticipated next year.
“This discovery is an exciting tip-of-the-iceberg for the exoplanet discoveries we can expect from Gaia in the future,” said Matthew Standing, an ESA research fellow, in a statement.
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