Strange planet "surpasses" Earth, flying at 2 million km/hour

(NLDO) - An observatory in New Zealand may have found the first exoplanet orbiting a hypervelocity star.

Research recently presented in The Astronomical Journal describes a strange star-planet pair hurtling through the bulge of Earth's Milky Way galaxy.

The pair are currently about 24,000 light years away from us, but are hurtling together at nearly 2 million km/h (540 km/s).

Image of stars near the center of our galaxy, some carrying planets. The redder the path color, the faster they are moving - Photo: NASA

It is normal for stars carrying planets to move through the Milky Way, but the speed of the pair mentioned above is unusually fast.

For comparison, the speed at which the Solar System - including Earth - is moving is about 724 km/h (200 km/s).

The odd couple was discovered as a multinational team hunted for exoplanets in data from the Microlensing Observatory in Astrophysics (MOA), a project conducted by at the Mount John Observatory at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand).

The researchers then used data from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia satellite to further explore the "portraits" of these two strange worlds.

The hypervelocity star has a relatively low mass compared to the Sun, according to co-author astronomer Sean Terry of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Meanwhile, its planet is so huge, it is classified as a "super-Neptune". It is also the first potential planet discovered around a hyper-velocity star.

The pair's estimated velocity is also close to the threshold at which objects escape the Milky Way (about 550 to 600 km/s). So if something were to speed them up a bit, they would soon enter intergalactic space.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/hanh-tinh-la-vuot-mat-trai-dat-bay-voi-toc-do-2-trieu-km-gio-196250219094904143.htm