Indian American Student In Team That Discovers Jupiter-Like planet
Previous Jupiter-like exoplanets have shown only faint traces of methane, far different from the heavy methane atmospheres of the gas giants in our solar system.
All of these characteristics, the researchers say, point to a planet that is very much what models suggest Jupiter was like in its infancy.
Patel and Stanimir Metchev, a Physics & Astronomy Professor at Western University in Canada and at Stony Brook University, are co-investigators on the scientific study.
They are both members of the international Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey (GPIES) team, which is dedicated to imaging and characterising exoplanets, planets discovered outside of earth's solar system.
"What makes 51 Eridani particularly interesting is that it also harbours dust and ice in the planetary system," explained Metchev.
"These are much like the dust and the ice grains produced by collisions among asteroids and comets in the Solar System."
More data from the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory reveal that 51 Eridani is also surrounded by a more distant and colder cometary belt, much like the Kuiper Belt of comets beyond Neptune in the Solar System."
The two belts - the asteroid and the cometary belt around 51 Eridani - fall on either side of the newly discovered planet 51 Eridani b.
"The overall structure bears striking resemblance to our own Solar System, with Jupiter as the most massive planet orbiting between a belt of asteroids and a belt of comets," explained Metchev.
"In 51 Eridani, we are therefore seeing what the Solar System resembled at a very young age, around the time when the Earth was still forming."
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