HD 95086 b is a confirmed, directly imaged exoplanet orbiting the young, 17 Myr A-class pre-main-sequence star HD 95086. It is roughly 5 times as massive as

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...

and orbits about 70 AU away from the parent star. It was detected at thermal infrared wavelengths (3.8 μm) through direct imaging, using the NACO instrument on the VLT. A debris disk has been detected in this system at submillimeter wavelengths and has been resolved in the far-infrared from data obtained with the Herschel Space Observatory. The planet was initially detected in data taken in 2012 at a separation from the parent star of (~56 AU) and position angle of . The planet was recovered at a high signal-to-noise ratio in June 2013. Astrometry for the planet in January 2012 and June 2013, and from a marginal detection in March 2013 confirm that it is bound to the parent star, not a background star. HD 95086 b's brightness at 3.8 μm when combined with sensitive upper limits on its brightness at shorter wavelengths is consistent with trends seen for other young, directly imaged planets like those around

HR 8799 HR 8799 is a roughly 30 million-year-old main-sequence star located away from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. It has roughly 1.5 times the Sun's mass and 4.9 times its luminosity. It is part of a system that also ...

. In particular, the lower limit of its 1.65–3.8 μm color of 3.1 magnitudes excludes background stars and most

brown dwarfs Brown dwarfs (also called failed stars) are substellar objects that are not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen ( 1H) into helium in their cores, unlike a main-sequence star. Instead, they have a mass between the most ...

. The host star was considered a highly probable member of the Lower Centaurus Crux star forming region, until tentatively reassigned with probability 71% to Carina association. The star has a mass of 1.6

solar masses The solar mass () is a standard unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately . It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies and black holes. It is approximately equal to the mass of ...

making it a late A type star. It is located approximately 90

parsecs The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to or (au), i.e. . The parsec unit is obtained by the use of parallax and trigonometry, an ...

away in the constellation of Carina. HD-95086b is a massive planet that exists at a large orbital radius, therefore it is a viable candidate for a planet that formed close to its host star and was later scattered outwards via gravitational interactions with other massive particles in orbit around the star. In a debris disk, these particles are of the form of other orbiting planets or

planetesimals Planetesimals are solid objects thought to exist in protoplanetary disks and debris disks. Per the Chamberlin–Moulton planetesimal hypothesis, they are believed to form out of cosmic dust grains. Believed to have formed in the Solar System a ...

. This scattering mechanism has been investigated for particles of the form of over-dense fluid elements like those found in a

protoplanetary disk A protoplanetary disk is a rotating circumstellar disc of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star, a T Tauri star, or Herbig Ae/Be star. The protoplanetary disk may also be considered an accretion disk for the star itself, be ...

containing a planet. It has been proposed that scattering events could explain observed massive planets at large orbital radii. Spatially resolved images of the system from the Herschel Space Observatory show evidence for a possible 2 belt system with a large clearing between the belts, similar to

. HD-95086b is probably responsible for carving the sharp inner edge of the outer disk, but additional planets in this system occupying the rest of the gap may be a strong possibility. In August 2022, this planet and its host star were included among 20 systems to be named by the third

NameExoWorlds NameExoWorlds (also known as IAU NameExoWorlds) is the name of various projects managed by the International Astronomical Union (I.A.U.) to encourage names to be submitted for astronomical objects, which would later be considered for official ad ...

project.

Physical properties

Atmosphere of HD 95086 contains a large amounts of dust, probably a small, sub-micrometer

forsterite Forsterite (Mg2SiO4; commonly abbreviated as Fo; also known as white olivine) is the magnesium-rich end-member of the olivine solid solution series. It is isomorphous with the iron-rich end-member, fayalite. Forsterite crystallizes in the orthorh ...

grains. The planet is very red in color, possibly due to the presence of the circumplanetary disk.

References

{{2013 in space Exoplanets discovered in 2013 Exoplanets detected by direct imaging Lower Centaurus Crux