With the TESS telescope

Researchers discover one of the youngest planets

The planet TIDYE-1 b in front of its star, with remnants of its protoplanetary disk on the left(Bild: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt, K. Miller (Caltech/IPAC))

In their search for potentially habitable planets outside our solar system, researchers have discovered an extrasolar planet orbiting a young protostar with the help of NASA's TESS satellite. With an age of only around three million years, it is the youngest transiting exoplanet discovered to date.

The giant planet with the unwieldy catalog name IRAS 04125+2902 b (also known as TIDYE-1 b) is a baby from an astronomical point of view. According to astronomers, its discovery is due to an extraordinary stroke of luck. The star around which the planet orbits is still surrounded by a disk of gas and dust which, for unknown reasons, is completely misaligned with the planet's orbit, the researchers write in the journal "Nature".

Planet is about the size of Jupiter
TIDYE-1 b has approximately the diameter of Jupiter, but has only about 30 percent of its mass and takes only 8.83 days to orbit its central star. Using several telescopes, the researchers determined the age of the star to be 3.3 million years, which means that this could also be the maximum age of the planet.

Astronomers are puzzled by the orientation of the star's protoplanetary disk (a disk of gas and dust; note), which has a completely different orientation to the planet TIDYE-1. The inclination of the disk around the sun IRAS 04125+2902 remains a mystery for the time being and will probably only be clarified by further observations, according to the scientists.

As big as a fridge, four cameras
TESS (the abbreviation stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) is about the size of a fridge and is equipped with four cameras. Like its predecessor, the "Kepler" telescope, the observatory observes the light of certain stars in space.

TESS, whose mission began in April 2018, is designed to find both small rocky planets and giant celestial bodies - and cover a much larger area than the "Kepler" space telescope. Like the latter, TESS observes the light of certain stars. If this fades briefly, it could mean that a planet has passed by.