NASA (Exoplanet Catalog artwork)HD 106906 b
A giant planet 730 AU from its stars — a Planet Nine lookalike
Overview
HD 106906 b is a directly imaged planetary-mass companion and exoplanet orbiting the star HD 106906, in the constellation Crux at about 336 ± 13 light-years (103 ± 4 pc) from Earth. It is estimated to be about eleven times the mass of Jupiter and is located about 738 AU away from its host star. HD 106906 b is an oddity; while its mass estimate is nominally consistent with identifying it as an exoplanet, it appears at a much wider separation from its parent star than thought possible for in-situ formation from a protoplanetary disk.
Source: Wikipedia
NASA: HD 106906 b is a gas giant exoplanet that orbits a F-type star. Its mass is 11 Jupiters, it takes 13538.6 years to complete one orbit of its star, and is 650 AU from its star. Its discovery was announced in 2013.
Why it matters
- Imaged in 2013 orbiting a young binary star about 336 light-years away.
- Hubble measured its orbit in 2020: highly eccentric and inclined, like the Planet Nine hypothesis predicts.
- May have been flung outward by its host stars and then stabilised by a passing star.
NASA puts it this way: “HD 106906 b is a gas giant exoplanet that orbits an F-type star. Its mass is 11 Jupiters, it takes 13538.6 years to complete one orbit of its star, and is 650.0 AU from its star. Its discovery was announced in 2013.”
Discovery & system
- Discovered
- 2013 · Imaging · Las Campanas Observatory
- Discovery paper
- Bailey et al. 2014
- Host star
- HD 106906 · F5 V · 6,516 K · 1.5 M☉
- System
- 1 known planet (circumbinary)
The system
| World | Period | Distance | Radius | Mass | Temp. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HD 106906 b | 13,530.8 yr | 650 AU | 1.11 R♃ | 11 M♃ | 1,800 K |
By the numbers
- Radius
- 1.11 R♃12.4 R⊕
- Mass
- 11 M♃3,496 M⊕
- Distance from star
- 650 AU97,240 million km
- Equilibrium temp.
- 1,800 K1,527 °C
- Starlight received
- 0 × Earth
- Distance from Earth
- 336 ly103 pc
- Density
- 10.1 g/cm³1.83 × Earth
Sources
Image: NASA (Exoplanet Catalog artwork) · NASA media: generally free of copyright · image page
Text: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Taglines and highlights are editorial.