The exoplanets, all larger than Earth but smaller than ice giant Neptune, dance around the bright star in a perfectly synchronized cosmic dance of tightly connected orbits.
In this case, this means that the planet closest to the star, called b, makes three orbits around the star in the time it takes the next planet, c, to make two orbits.
Every time c makes three paths, d makes two paths. The pattern continues until the two outer planets in the system, f and g, where the ratio is 4:3.
So the inner part does four rounds every time the outer part does three rounds.
The closely related cosmic dance is known as orbital resonance, a phenomenon that may unfold at the beginning of most planetary systems.
However, an ideal orbit can easily be disturbed, for example, by the passage of stars or the collision of planets.
The system is “frozen in time”
However, in the newly discovered planetary system, the resonance appears to continue for more than a billion years after the system itself was formed. As if frozen in time.
It’s a rare sight, because perhaps only 1% of all planetary systems orbit in resonance, which is why scientists call it the “perfect solar system.”
Even rarer, astronomers have found five pairs of exoplanets orbiting simultaneously around each other, just as they did when the system formed billions of years ago.
According to the researchers, this indicates that “the evolution of the system has been very gentle and calm,” explains lead author Raphael Luc. Astronomy.
Watch the video: This is how the planets move
That’s why astronomers believe the original family of planets is ideal for studying how planetary systems like ours form.
It can be followed from Earth
The team behind the study used data from 12 telescopes to identify the six planets in our cosmic neighbourhood.
One of them was the American space telescope TESS, which was sent into space in 2018 and already observed in 2020 how two planets passed in front of the host star HD110067.
Later, astronomers received help from the European Space Agency’s CHEOPS space telescope.
The star itself is the brightest star ever discovered with more than four planets around it, so telescopes on Earth will be watching it closely.
Researchers hope that in the future they will be able to obtain more data about the size, atmosphere, and perhaps even the core of planets.
The research appeared in the scientific journal magazine nature.
