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Giant planet discovered orbiting tiny star
Astronomers at UCL and the University of Warwick, as part of a global collaboration including partners in Chile, USA and Europe, have discovered the smallest known star to host a transiting giant planet, which should not exist under leading planet formation theories.
This system has been discovered as part of a large-scale investigation of TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) data, looking for giant planets around low-mass stars, led by Dr Edward Bryant, who completed this work at UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory and the University of Warwick. Professor Amaury Triaud, University of Birmingham, co-author and member of the SPECULOOS collaboration, said: “Based on the stellar irradiation of TOI-6894b, we expect the atmosphere is dominated by methane chemistry, which is very rare to identify. Co-author Dr. Andrés Jordán, researcher at the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics and professor at Adolfo Ibáñez University, said: “This system provides a new challenge for models of planet formation, and it offers a very interesting target for follow-up observations to characterize its atmosphere.
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