The planet is called “b Pictoris c,” and it is in the Beta Pictoris system. It is about 63 light-years from Earth. By taking pictures of it, they can get more information about its brightness and dynamic mass, which they hope will help them figure out how it started.
Scientists learned about the planet by watching how it changed the orbit of its parent star. Because it circles its star so close, it is impossible to imagine the planet by itself.
The researchers used a method called the “radial velocity method,” which has been used for years to find hundreds of exoplanets but has never been used to directly evaluate exoplanets.
Using information from the four telescopes of the VLT, the team was able to pinpoint the location with great accuracy and take a picture of it. This was the first time that both the “radial velocity approach” and direct imaging could be used to confirm an exoplanet.
The newly imaged Beta Pictoris c alongside Beta Pictoris b.
According to Mathias Nowak, principal author of the article that was recently published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, “this implies we can now obtain both the brightness and the mass of this exoplanet.” The more large a planet is, the more brilliant it is typically.
The scientists will have to wait until they have enough information about the radial velocity to figure out the mass. Since the exoplanet’s orbit takes 28 years, this could take a while.
According to a statement from Frank Eisenhauer, the GRAVITY project’s chief scientist at the Max Planck Institutes for Astronomy and Extraterrestrial Physics, “It is remarkable what level of detail and sensitivity we can accomplish with GRAVITY.”
From the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy to planets outside our solar system, we are just starting to learn about amazing new worlds, he said.