Tag

Stellar Dimming

All articles tagged with #stellar dimming

astronomy1 month ago•3 min saved

Metallic Disk Around Hidden Companion Dims a Sun-like Star

A Sun-like star J0705+0612 dramatically dimmed between September 2024 and May 2025 due to a giant, metal-rich cloud about 1.2 billion miles from the star. The cloud appears bound to a distant companion with a few Jupiter masses—potentially a brown dwarf, giant planet, or low-mass star—carrying a circumsecondary or circumplanetary disk. Gas moves with winds of metals such as calcium and iron, measured with the GHOST spectrograph, indicating a dynamic debris disk around the companion. The star is ~3,000 light-years away, and infrared excess suggests a disk in an older system, implying a late-stage collision may have produced the cloud. This rare observation shows mature planetary systems can experience dramatic, disk-driven obscurations.

via gizmodo.com|

#astronomy #debris-disk #exoplanets

astronomy2 years ago•6 min saved

Unprecedented Discovery: Collision of Giant Ice Planets Unveiled 1850 Light-Years Away

Scientists have observed a rare event: the aftermath of a massive planetary collision around a star located 1850 light-years away. The collision likely involved two Neptune/mini-Neptune exoplanets, creating a synestia, a puffy ring of debris around a joint planetary core. The resulting debris cloud periodically blocks the parent star's light, causing dimming events. The infrared afterglow from the synestia is expected to persist for centuries. Over time, a single giant world with a rich lunar system is expected to emerge from this collision.

via Big Think|

#astronomy #infrared-afterglow #moon-formation