Indian Scientist-led International Team Discovers Exo-planet 13 times Bigger than Jupiter

A new exoplanet with mass 13 times that of Jupiter has been discovered by an international team of experts led by an Indian scientist. Prof Abhijit Chakraborty of the Ahmedabad-based Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), under the Department of Space, led the team, which includes scientists from India, Germany, Switzerland and the US.

The planet is located 731 light years away from Earth. (Representative Image)

The discovery of the massive exoplanet was made using the indigenously-made PRL Advanced Radial-Velocity Abu-Sky Search Spectrograph (PARAS) at the 1.2-metre telescope located at Gurushikhar Observatory in Mount Abu.

The exoplanet (a planet found beyond our solar system) was discovered around the star called TOI4603 or HD 245134. Nasa’s The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) initially declared TOI4603 a possible candidate to host a secondary body of unknown nature.

Using PARAS, scientists discovered it as a planet by measuring the mass of the secondary body and hence the planet is called TOI 4603b or HD 245134b. It is located 731 light years away and orbits a sub-giant F-type star TOI4603 every 7.24 days. What sets this discovery apart is that the planet falls into the transition mass range of massive giant planets and low-mass brown dwarfs with masses ranging from 11 to 16 times that of Jupiter. Only fewer than five exoplanets are currently known in this mass range so far. The findings of the new study has recently been published in the journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters.

Massive giant exoplanets are those that have mass greater than four times that of Jupiter. The newly discovered exoplanet TOI 4603b is one of the most massive and densest giant planets that orbits very close to its host star at a distance less than 1/10th the distance between our Sun and the Earth.

The exoplanet with a surface temperature of 1670K is likely to undergo 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.

This discovery marks the third exoplanet discovery by India, and by the PRL scientists using PARAS spectrograph and the PRL 1.2m telescope, following the discoveries in 2018 (K2-236b) and 2021 (TOI-1789b).