Astronomers have discovered new hints of a giant, scorching-hot planet orbiting Vega, one of the brightest stars in the night sky.
Astronomers have discovered new hints of a giant, scorching-hot planet orbiting Vega, one of the brightest stars in the night sky.
The research, published this month in The Astronomical Journal, was led by University of Colorado Boulder student Spencer Hurt, an undergraduate in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences.
It focuses on an iconic and relatively young star, Vega, which is part of the constellation Lyra and has a mass twice that of our own sun. This celestial body sits just 25 light-years, or about 150 trillion miles, from Earth—pretty close, astronomically speaking.
Scientists can also see Vega with telescopes even when it’s light out, which makes it a prime candidate for research, said study coauthor Samuel Quinn.
“It’s bright enough that you can observe it at twilight when other stars are getting washed out by sunlight,” said Quinn, an astronomer at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
Read more at: University of Colorado Boulder
