A team of scientists headed by Professor Abhijit Chakraborty of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad has discovered the densest alien planet, which is 13 times bigger than Jupiter.
This is the third exoplanet identified by PRL scientists. The findings of the study were published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters.
A team of scientists from India, Germany, Switzerland and the United States used the indigenous PRL Advanced Radial-velocity Abu-sky Search spectrograph (PARAS) at the Gurushikhar Observatory in Mt. Abu to measure the mass of the planet precisely. The exoplanet has a mass of 14 g/cm3.
The ground-breaking technology allowed the team to make significant astronomical discoveries.
The newly found planets orbit a star known as TOI-4603, a sub-giant F-type star from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Scientists are calling it one of the few known massive giant planets with an extreme density. It lies in the transition mass region of massive giant planets and low-mass brown dwarfs, an important addition to the population of fewer than five known objects in this mass range.
The body has been confirmed to be a planet and has been named TOI 4603b or HD 245134b.
The planet is located 731 light years distant from Earth and revolves around its star every 7.24 days. With a temperature of 1396 degrees Celsius, the planet is scorching.
The study says that the planet's mass ranges from 11 to 16 times that of Jupiter and is raging hot, with a temperature of 1,396 degrees Celsius.
The exoplanet with a surface temperature of 1670 K is likely undergoing high-eccentricity tidal migration with an eccentricity value of approximately 0.3 The detection of such systems provides valuable insights into the formation, migration, and evolution mechanisms of massive exoplanets, ISRO said in a press release.
