Milky Way's fluffiest system found a new planet

In 2012, it was found that Kepler-52, the Sun-like yellow dwarf star has three exoplanets in its orbit. Each of those exoplanets turned out to be with a density higher than cotton candy. This led to putting them in a category called super puff world.

Now reports came that scientists have found a fourth one in the category.

Jessica Libby-Roberts, a planetary scientist at Pennsylvania State University, said in a statement, "Super puff planets are fairly rare, and when they do occur, they tend to be the only one in a planetary system."

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She further reported adding, "If trying to explain how three super puffs formed in one system wasn't challenging enough, now we have to explain a fourth planet, whether it's a super puff or not. And we can't rule out additional planets in the system either."

It was 2019 when the strange nature of the three exoplanets orbiting Kepler-51 was established and observations were made by astronomers to create measurements of the radii and masses of the exoplanets. The acquired measurements were used to calculate their densities, which were found to be less than 0.1 grams per cubic centimetre.

When a team of astronomers co-led by Libby-Roberts and Kento Masuda of Osaka University set out to catch one of the discovered exoplanets, they found that there might be more exoplanets than do not get caught in the eyes.

The team then further pored out data on transit timings obtained by NASA's planet-hunting telescope TESS, and observations from several ground-based telescopes as well.

After they carefully went back to their data to ensure no errors were made, the conclusion said there was an unseen exoplanet.

The newly found fourth exoplanet will be named Kepler-51e as the other previous found were named Kepler-51b, Kepler-51c, and Kepler-51d.

Masudsa explained, "We conducted what is called a 'brute force' search, testing out many different combinations of planet properties to find the four-planet model that explains all of the transit data gathered over the past 14 years."

She further said, "We found that the signal is best explained if Kepler-51e has a mass similar to the other three planets and follows a fairly circular orbit of about 264 days – something we would expect based on other planetary systems. Other possible solutions we found involve a more massive planet on a wider orbit, though we think these are less likely."

(With inputs from agencies)