Podcaster: Richard Drumm
Title: UNAWE Space Scoop – Could This Be One of the Strangest Planets Ever Found?
Organization: 365 Days Of Astronomy
Link : http://365daysofastronomy.org/ ; https://spacescoop.org/en/scoops/2504/teenage-galaxy-found-hiding-in-a-cosmic-nursery/
Description: Space scoop, news for children.
Recently, a team of astronomers found a new exoplanet, called 2M1510 (AB) b, that really surprised them. This new exoplanet is special — its orbit looks more like a Ferris wheel!
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Transcript:
This is the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast. Today we bring you a new episode in our Space Scoop series. This show is produced in collaboration with Universe Awareness, a program that strives to inspire every child with our wonderful cosmos.
Today’s story is…
Could This Be One of the Strangest Planets Ever Found?
May 6, 2025
Astronomers love hunting for exoplanets.
Most planets they find, just like the ones in our solar system, orbit around their stars in roughly the same way.
For us, that’s counter-clockwise as seen from the Earth’s north pole.
They’re a bit like the passengers on a carousel or merry-go-round, with the planets all traveling around their star while it spins on its axis at the center of the ride.
But recently, a team of astronomers found a new exoplanet, called 2M1510 (AB) b, that really surprised them.
This new exoplanet is special — its orbit looks more like a Ferris wheel than a carousel!
It goes up and over the top rather than around the side, traveling at a right angle to the carousel-like path we normally find.
But having an unusual orbit is only part of the puzzle, and to see just how odd our new exoplanet is we also need to look at its stars.
You heard me right, not star — stars!
This strange new world orbits around two stars at once, which, in their turn, dance around each other in what we call a binary system.
Binary systems are quite common, there are lots of them in the galaxy.
As if that perpendicular polar orbit bit isn’t cool enough, both of the stars in this pair are brown dwarfs, a kind of almost-star that never got quite big enough to ‘switch on’ and start the nuclear fusion that powers the starlight of most stars.
To find something as unique as this, astronomers need a really powerful telescope.
That’s why the team used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the VLT, to observe these two brown dwarfs in the hopes of finding a planet.
You see, these brown dwarfs eclipse each other, which means that one passes in front of the other as seen from Earth.
This lucky coincidence means that the astronomers can watch the stars closely and detect tiny variations in the orbital period of the stars.
This is only the second pair of eclipsing brown dwarfs we’ve found, so it’s a rare bird indeed!
As they watched, they saw the two stars wobbling around on their orbits, and worked out that the pattern of wobbles they observed could only be caused by an exoplanet on a polar orbit.
There have previously been hints that planets on polar orbits around binary stars could exist.
In theory, these orbits are stable, and planet-forming discs on polar orbits around stellar pairs have been detected before.
However, until now, we lacked clear evidence that these polar planets do exist.
And now we do!
The astronomers who found this planet are still looking for new worlds, searching around known binary stars for even more exciting discoveries.
Our Universe is full of surprises, so watch this space to see what other amazing exoplanets they might find!
Hey, here’s a cool fact!
This is the best evidence yet that has been found for a planet with such a funny-looking orbit around a pair of stars, let alone a pair of brown dwarfs!
Can you imagine what it’d be like to live on a planet with two dim, lukewarm suns like this, like the fictional Star Wars world Tatooine?
Awesome! Now all I need is an X-wing starfighter! Pew, pew, pew!
Ahem…
Thank you for listening to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Planetary Science Institute. Audio post production by me, Richard Drumm, project management by Avivah Yamani, and hosting donated by libsyn.com. This content is released under a creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. Please share what you love but don’t sell what’s free.
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As we wrap up today’s episode, we are looking forward to unravel more stories from the Universe. With every new discovery from ground-based and space-based observatories, and each milestone in space exploration, we come closer to understanding the cosmos and our place within it.
Until next time let the stars guide your curiosity!