New Delhi:
Scientists have found an alien planet, dubbed as LTT 1445Ab and now the Astronomers think that the planet has three suns on its horizon. Data gathered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) LTT 1445Ab orbits just one of the three stars, all of which are red dwarfs in the latter half of their lives, and the system is about 22.5 light-years away from Earth, according to Space.com
"If you're standing on the surface of that planet, there are three suns in the sky, but two of them are pretty far away and small-looking," co-author Jennifer Winters, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, told New Scientist. "They're like two red, ominous eyes in the sky."
The planet is rocky, about a third larger than Earth, according to TESS data.
LTT 1445Ab is very different from the 2016 discovery of HD 131399Ab, another exoplanet with three suns. The latter is a giant with a 550-year orbit around one of the stars in a triple system 340 light-years away, according to Science Alert.
Earlier, a study led by a group of NASA scientists found a 45 million-year-old planet, orbiting one of its brightest young stars. The discovery is significant as it can further provide information on formation of planetary bodies.
The unnamed planet outside our solar system was first observed in November 2018 during the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission conducted by NASA. There are very less number of exoplanets which circle relatively young stars.
Talking about the latest findings, Elisabeth Newton, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College, said, "One of the overall goals of astronomy is understanding the big picture of how we got here, how solar systems and galaxies take shape and why".
"By finding solar systems that are different from our own - especially young ones - we can hope to learn why Earth and our own solar system evolved in the ways that they did," Newton added.
