An international team of astronomer has oversee to directly image several objects orb stars larger than our Sun . The physical object orbit far away from their horde stars and may be either planets or small stars , but that they have been seen directly suggests a new approach to get long - reach exoplanets .
In a paper , publish in theAstrophysical Journal , the team reckon for far - away companion of six medium aggregated stars . They discovered that three stars , Gamma Hya , HD 5608 , and HD 109272 , have stellar companion , which were imaged instantly . The companions have 61 percent , 10 pct , and 28 pct of the stack of the Sun , severally . These objects are located further than Neptune is from our star .
The other three star also have companion but they are too faint to be seen with current technology . Estimates by the researchers suggest that iota Dra , 18 Del , and HD 14067 have likely exoplanets with a mickle between 30 and 60 clip the mass of Jupiter .
Above , direct images of three of the objects , circled . The host stars are show up in white . NAOJ
To look for the object around the star topology , the research worker start by using a well - known method acting called theradial velocity method acting . They looked at the wobble in the stars generate by the gravitational consequence planets have . The shape and intensity of the wobbles deepen bet on how close and how big the companion is .
Nearby object generate a wave - alike wobble , but if the companion is further out than 1.5 billion kilometers ( 930 million mile ) from its star , the wobble looks more like a linear increase . The squad had to prove that this linear trend was due to a distant object , so they observe the candidate objects with theSubaru telescopein Hawaii .
The astronomer hope that this method acting will be used to fall upon many more removed objects that we might be missing from current surveys . So far we have confirmed the existence of more than 3,500 exoplanets , and every unexampled finding allows us to refine our world formation theory , getting a estimable idea as to how Earth get here .
