A surprising post-valentine romance story fires up the space as researchers have discovered a very special relationship of a gigantic exoplanet with its host star. The giant planet was named as HAT-P-2b and an observation was based using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
According to Space, HAT-P-2b creates pulsations similar to heartbeats towards the star every time the two spaces' wonders gets close. The lead author of the study is Julien de Wit from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He stated that the discovery coincided with the celebration of the Valentine's Day and it was one of a kind.
The planet was discovered in the year 2007 which is known as eight times more massive compared to Jupiter. HAT-P-2b's uniqueness is its shape, because it is more elliptical compared to the orbits of the other officially recognized planets thus, it makes a closer approach to the start every 5.6 Earth days. The giant planet's powerful gravity pulls the star causing its outer shell to vibrate.
Co-author Heather Knutson stated that it is very surprising to visualize that the small planet seems to affect the whole star considering the far observation place and the difference in their sizes. HAT-P-2b is actually 100 times less massive than its host star.
As reported by Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the observation of the researchers reflects that their understanding of the interaction of planet versus star is still incomplete. Extensive research and study on stars enables exceptional truth and fact such as listening to the story behind regarding the "heartbeats" these galaxies tells.
Spitzer has visualized the planet-star interactions from the earth's solar system for about 350 hours from July 2011 to November 2015. With the benefit of the system's alignment with respect to earth, the telescope was able to observe the planet directly in front and behind the star. HAT-P-2b and its host star lies about 370 light-years from earth.
