Using SOPHIE, scientists discover 'unusual planetary system' WASP 148, from the ground

Exoplanets are worlds beyond our solar system that scientists have started tracking down and locating only in the last two decades. In a recent breakthrough, an “unusual planetary system” has been discovered that too directly from the ground of the extrasolar system.

Researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) acted under an international collaboration and detected star WASP 148 using a French instrument called SOPHIE at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence.

CNRS stated that the “unprecedented ground-based discovery of two strongly interacting exoplanets”.

Scientists found that WASP 148 was host to two planets WASP 148b and WASP 148c. While the first world, WASP 148b, orbits its star in about nine days; WASP 148c takes four times longer. According to the location and gravitational pull of the exoplanets, a strong interaction between the two was noticed.

“While a single planet, uninfluenced by a second one, would move with a constant period, WASP-148b and WASP-148c undergo acceleration and deceleration that provides evidence of their interaction,” the CNRS said in its press release. 

Both the planets’ orbits also showed eccentric behavior and they were detected to have “a mutual inclination below 35 degrees”.

Researchers have based the characterization and discovery of WASP 148 on the “photometric and spectroscopic observations and their Keplerian and Newtonian analyses” taken over a period of 10 years. The study has been published in the latest issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

When WASP 148 is compared with other solar systems that are the most alike such as Kepler-9, Kepler-277, or TOI-216, it is seen that their transiting planets behave very differently as compared to 148b and 148c. 

“A significant difference between WASP-148 and the three systems above is the eccentricity of its planets, which here are significantly different from zero. This is also a significant difference of WASP-148b to other hot Jupiters, most of whose orbits are circular,” the study said.

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