When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.A series of images shows observations of the exoplanet Beta Pictoris d over more than a decade. . | Credit: ESO/B. Sutlieff, M. Bonse et al.It has taken over ten years, but astronomers have finally won a prolonged game of cosmic hide-and-seek with a planet hiding around the star Beta Pictoris. The extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is known as Beta Pictoris d. It is found 63 light-years away and has two planetary siblings, which were caught some time ago.This new exoplanet is 100 times fainter than its sibling Beta Pictoris b, which was the first planet discovered in the system. That makes Beta Pictoris d the faintest exoplanet ever seen from Earth.AdvertisementAdvertisementLike its previously discovered sibling, Beta Pictoris d is a gas giant. However, unlike Beta Pictoris b and Beta Pictoris c, it is much further away from its parent star and is thus much cooler than its siblings. The newly discovered world is also smaller than the previously seen world around Beta Pictoris. While both Beta Pictoris b and Beta Pictoris c have around 10 times the mass of Jupiter each, Beta Pictoris d has only around 2.4 times the mass of the solar system’s most massive world. That makes it one of the lightest exoplanets ever directly imaged by a ground-based telescope.”Planet d, it seems, has been playing a game of hide-and-seek with us for over a decade, and only now can we say ‘found you!'” team member Jayne Birkby an astronomer at the University of Oxford in the UK, said in a statement.The discovery of Beta Pictoris d helps clear up a puzzle regarding a disk of dust and debris in this planetary system, which is theorized to be made of the leftovers of planet formation. That is because this newly found world has exactly the right mass and location needed to explain both the odd shape of this debris disk and its location.11 years of hide-and-seekThe team behind this discovery wasn’t initially looking for a third planet around Beta Pictoris. Instead, they were simply attempting to learn more about the system’s first planet.AdvertisementAdvertisement”This was a serendipitous discovery,” team co-leader Ben Sutlieff, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh said. “We initially wanted to look more at a known planet in the system, Beta Pictoris b, to see how it changed over time.”That was until they spotted telltale signs of another planet around the same star. Delving back into 11 years of archival data, the team found the third planet lurking in various images.Marked with an arrow is Beta Pictoris d, the third planet discovered around the star Beta Pictoris. | Credit: ESO/B. Sutlieff, M. Bonse et al.To consider how impressive it is to directly image a planet outside the solar system, consider that of the over 6,000 worlds in NASA’s exoplanet catalog, less than 100 were discovered using direct imaging. Such …
