Indian Astronomers, the Exoplanet Search and Study Group at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad have discovered a Planet bigger than Jupiter, orbiting its Sun in just 3.2 days.
In another development few days back, a team from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) at Pune reports finding a rare class of Radio Stars. These stars are hotter than Sun and have unusually strong Magnetic Fields and much stronger Stellar Wind.
Congratulations to the entire team who have worked day and night for days and years together on this great achievement.
Exoplanet
Professor Abhijit Chakraborty and his team discovered the Exoplanet using the Advanced Radial-Velocity Abu-Sky Search (PARAS) Optical Fibre-fed Spectrograph, first of its kind in India. They did this on the 1.2 metre Telescope of PRL at the Mt. Abu Observatory.
The name that they have given to this Exoplanet is TOI 1789b. It is orbiting an ageing star that is 1.5 times that of our Sun and located 725 Light-Years away. The Exoplanet is about 1.4 times the size of Jupiter. Its mass is about 70% of that of Jupiter. The measurements were taken between December 2020 and March 2021.
Radio Stars
A team lead by Barnali Das at NCRA Pune discovered eight Stars belonging to a rare class of Radio Stars, which are warmer than the Sun. A Giant Meterwave Radio Pulse (uGMRT) was used to make this discovery. These stars tend to emit intense Radio Pulses due to their emission behaviour which resembles a Lighthouse on a pitch-dark island. They are “Main-sequence Radio Pulse” (MRPs) emitters that have powerful Magnetic Fields.
Out of the 15 MRPs detected in space so far, 11 of them were discovered by the Astronomers in Pune. Moreover, eight of the 11 stars have been discovered this year.
Read the article published by TWC India at weather.com
Representational Image of an exoplanet -(ESO/M. Kornmesser)
