The DS Tuc BINARY star system is quite interesting as the stars have reached 1% of the age of the Sun. At a distance of 150 light-years away from the solar system resides a young planet that has offered a fascinating opportunity for researchers as they managed to observe an early planetary system.
The team of astronomers thought that the pull exerted by the second star could affect the disk of dust and gas that was found around the central star at some point, influencing the orbit of the planet. However, this wasn’t the case, as no signs of influence were observed. This new data infers that planets similar to Earth may appear and evolve in binary systems of this type.
An international team of researchers harnessed the power of the Magellan Telescopes arrays located in Chile. One of the tools, the Planet Finder Spectrograph, was used to measure the Rossiter-MacLaughlin effect, which is represented by the approximate angle between the orbit of a planet and the spin of the home star.
More about the exoplanet spotted in the distant binary star system
DS Tuc Ab, the planet observed by the researchers, follows an orbit with a 12 degrees incline in comparison to the rotational axis of the star. This surprisingly low incline seems to suggest that the force exerted by the companion star did not manage to affect the protoplanetary disc were the star formed in a significant manner.
Other planets found in solar systems tend to have a low obliquity, but this is not a regular trait in the context of objects found in binary star systems, as is DS Tuc Ab. A large number of similar planets tend to orbit their star at significant angles, in some cases reaching up to 90 degrees beyond the axis of the star.
With the age of 40 million years, the planet is quite small. More data can be found in a paper published in a scientific journal.