Kepler finds first known tilted solar system
Did you ever wonder why the planets from our Solar System are all in the same plane? They formed from a flat disc of gas and dust revolving around the Sun’s equator – Earth’s orbit makes an angle of just 7.2 degrees with the plane of the Sun’s equator, and this is similar for all the 9 8 planets (sorry Pluto). This is the case with pretty much every solar system astronomers have discovered so far.
However, five years ago, they began observing planets orbiting at steep angles to their stars’ equators; some planets even spin in the opposite direction to their star. But not a single one had a misaligned multiplanetary solar system – until now.
Daniel Huber of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, and his colleagues looked at Kepler-56, a star roughly 860 parsecs (2,800 light years) from Earth; it has two planets which orbit their sun closer than Mercury does to ours. Observations on this system revealed that the plane of the star’s equator tilts 45 degrees to the planets’ orbits.
Read more at http://www.zmescience.com/space/kepler-tilted-solar-system-21102013/#CgEjv2RasGcvC45X.99
However, five years ago, they began observing planets orbiting at steep angles to their stars’ equators; some planets even spin in the opposite direction to their star. But not a single one had a misaligned multiplanetary solar system – until now.
Daniel Huber of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, and his colleagues looked at Kepler-56, a star roughly 860 parsecs (2,800 light years) from Earth; it has two planets which orbit their sun closer than Mercury does to ours. Observations on this system revealed that the plane of the star’s equator tilts 45 degrees to the planets’ orbits.
Read more at http://www.zmescience.com/space/kepler-tilted-solar-system-21102013/#CgEjv2RasGcvC45X.99
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