1" means 1 arcsecond, not 1 inch, for the Americans. 1 arcsecond is 1/60th of an arcminute. 1 arc minute is 1/60th of degree. So the 1" scale shown represents 1/3600th of a degree. The object is measured at 1.54 arcseconds
Could the planet have been captured after the ballooned red dwarf shrank? E.g. a wandering planet. Or could something have made its orbit shift, e.g. if it was farther out and now it’s closer in?
Planet 8 Ursae Minoris b orbits a star some 530 light-years away that is in its death throes. A swollen red giant, the star would have been expected to expand beyond the planet’s orbit before receding to its present (still giant) size. In other words, the star would have engulfed and ripped apart any planets orbiting closely around it. Yet the planet remains in a stable, nearly circular orbit.
that line isn’t the horizon, it’s the edge of the shadow that separates day from night time. There’s no way to perceive it at ground level, but if you’re high in the air and the sun is near the horizon it’s visible.
[Within the large group of rogue planets are 42 pairs of planets that are gravitationally bound together, something that’s never been observed before. ]
I wonder if that means all 84 planets are bound together.
astronomy
Oldest
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