An international group of scientists has collected the initially attainable radio signal from a planet beyond our solar technique, emanating from an exoplanet technique about 51 light-years away.
Using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a radio telescope in the Netherlands, the researchers uncovered emission bursts from the Tau Bootes star-technique hosting a so-named hot Jupiter, a gaseous giant planet that is quite close to its personal sun.
The group led by researchers from the Cornell University in the US also observed other possible exoplanetary radio-emission candidates in the constellation Cancer and Upsilon Andromedae systems. However, the study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics discovered that only the Tau Bootes exoplanet technique exhibited a considerable radio signature, a exclusive possible window on the planet’s magnetic field.
“We present one of the first hints of detecting an exoplanet in the radio realm,” stated Cornell postdoctoral researcher Jake D. Turner.
“The signal is from the Tau Bootes system, which contains a binary star system and an exoplanet. We make the case for an emission by the planet itself,” he stated.
If confirmed via stick to-up observations, the researchers stated, this radio detection opens up a new window on exoplanets and delivers a novel way to examine alien worlds that are tens of light-years away.
Observing an exoplanet’s magnetic field aids astronomers decipher a planet’s interior and atmospheric properties, as properly as the physics of star-planet interactions, stated Turner.
Earth’s magnetic field protects it from solar wind dangers, maintaining the planet habitable.
“The magnetic field of Earth-like exoplanets may contribute to their possible habitability by shielding their own atmospheres from solar wind and cosmic rays, and protecting the planet from atmospheric loss,” Turner stated.
Two years ago, Turner and his colleagues examined the radio emission signature of Jupiter and scaled these emissions to mimic the attainable signatures from a distant Jupiter-like exoplanet.
Those final results became the template for looking radio emission from exoplanets 40 to one hundred light-years away.