Some scientists seem to be stumped with the discovery of a distant planetary system, which features multiple planets that seems to be orbiting at a tilt to their star.
An international team of astronomers discovered the whacky planetary system using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope.
Astronomers suggest that such tilted orbits have been previously found in planetary systems, which features a so-called hot Jupiter (a giant planet in a close orbit to its host star). However, this is the first that that tilted orbits have been found in a multiplanetary system without a hot Jupiter.
The discovery of the weird planetary system has been reported in a paper, "Stellar Spin-Orbit Misalignment in a Multiplanet System," published in the October 18 issue of the journal Science. Daniel Huber of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View is the lead author of the study and Steve Kawaler, an Iowa State University professor of physics and astronomy and a leader of the Kepler Asteroseismic Investigation, is the co-author of the study.
"This is a new level of detail about the architecture of a planetary system outside our solar system," said Kawaler. "These studies allow us to draw a detailed picture of a distant system that provides a new and critical test of our understanding of how these very alien solar systems are structured."
The new planetary system is said to be orbiting Kepler-56, which is a red giant star and is four times the mass of the sun and is around 3,000 light years from the Earth. Two of the planets are in close orbit around the host star, while a third massive object, probably another larger planet, is also orbiting the host star at a distance.
The third massive object is inclined to the orbital plane of the inner planets, which makes scientists believe that its torque is tilting the orbital plane of the inner planets, with respect to the equatorial plane of the parent star.
"It issues a continuous tug on the orbit of the smaller ones, pulling them into their inclined orbits," added Kawaler.
The observations of the Kepler-56 by scientists have added to evidence that tilted planetary orbits are possible even in planetary systems that do not contain a hot Jupiter.
