OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb is an extremely massive

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

, with a mass about 13.4 times that of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, 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 ...

(), or is, possibly, a low mass

brown dwarf 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 ...

, orbiting the G-dwarf star OGLE-2016-BLG-1190L, located about 22,000 light years from Earth, in the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the e ...

of Sagittarius, in the

galactic bulge In astronomy, a galactic bulge (or simply bulge) is a tightly packed group of stars within a larger star formation. The term almost exclusively refers to the central group of stars found in most spiral galaxies (see galactic spheroid). Bulges w ...

of the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye ...

. “Since the existence of the brown dwarf desert is the signature of different formation mechanisms for stars and planets, the extremely close proximity of OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb to this desert raises the question of whether it is truly a ‘planet’ (by formation mechanism) and therefore reacts back upon its role tracing the galactic distribution of planets," according to astronomers reporting the findings.

Discovery

The host star was discovered in June 2016 by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) collaboration; the

Spitzer Space Telescope The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), was an infrared space telescope launched in 2003. Operations ended on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, f ...

observed the microlensing event a few days after its discovery. OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb is the first exoplanet discovered by microlensing with the Spitzer space telescope and the first exoplanet discovered lying near the planet/brown dwarf boundary. In addition, the discovery "is likely to be the first Spitzer microlensing planet in the Galactic bulge/bar," according to the initial reported study.

References

External links

MOA collaboration

OGLE collaboration

Planet Homepage
* {{DEFAULTSORT:OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb Exoplanets detected by microlensing Exoplanets discovered in 2017 Sagittarius (constellation)

Discovery

See also

References

External links