Europe's Gaia Mission Finds a Mysterious Planet and Brown Dwarf | ESA
New research, published on February 4, 2025, uses data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft to confirm the existence of two mysterious celestial objects. Gaia-4b is a ‘Super-Jupiter’ exoplanet, and Gaia-5b a brown dwarf. These massive objects are unexpectedly orbiting low-mass stars.
Gaia-4b is a planet orbiting the previously unremarkable star Gaia-4 around 244 light-years away. Gaia-5b orbits the Gaia-5 star, around 134 light-years away from Earth. These two newly discovered objects are nearby, in our own galactic neighborhood. Their existence challenges current theories of planet formation, and Gaia's ongoing mission will provide valuable data to help us understand these intriguing objects.
“Gaia-4b is about twelve times more massive than Jupiter. With an orbital period of 570 days, it is a relatively cold gas giant planet,” explains first author Guðmundur Stefánsson of the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and first author of the new study.
“With a mass of around 21 Jupiters, Gaia-5b is a brown dwarf, more massive than a planet but too light to sustain nuclear fusion to be a star,” Guðmundur adds.
This is the first time a planet has been uniquely discovered by Gaia’s ability to sense the gravitational tug or ‘wobble’ the planet induces on a star.
Duration: 1 minute, 40 seconds
Release Date: Feb. 4, 2025
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