A planet the size of Neptune in our cosmic neighborhood

Less than 32 light-years away from Earth, there is a star called AU Microscopii, which is located in the southern part of the constellation Microscope. It is only 30 million years old and belongs to the youngest stars in our neighborhood. Now a planet the size of Neptune has been discovered, which is forming in the matter disk surrounding AU Microscopia.

The radius AU Mic b is slightly larger than the radius of Neptune, and the planet itself is at most 3 times more massive than it, i.e. it has a mass corresponding to 58 masses of the Earth. Like Neptune, AU Mic b is a gas giant, but unlike this type of object known from the Solar System, it orbits close to the host star. It orbits its star every 8.46 days, which is less than Mercury’s rotation around the sun.

The exoplanet was discovered by a transit method using the NASA TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) telescope. Its existence was confirmed by the Spitzer Space Telescope and terrestrial telescopes from Hawaii and Chile.

– One of the things we want to understand is when planets form and what happens to them at an early age. “My job is to get data about the brightness of the star and use it to understand the size and other properties of the planet,” said Thomas Barclay of the University of Maryland, one of the study’s authors.

Youth and proximity to the planetary system are the most exciting features for scientists. Studying this system may shed new light on the formation of planets and is likely to provide more information about the origins of the solar system.

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