Journey to Exoplanet in a "Strange Orbit" around Two Brown Dwarf Stars | ESO

Journey to Exoplanet in a "Strange Orbit" around Two Brown Dwarf Stars | ESO

Travel to 2M1510 (AB) b, a planet in a perpendicular orbit around two brown dwarfs

Take a journey with us to a peculiar planet as we rocket off to 2M1510 (AB) b, the first exoplanet to be found in a perpendicular orbit around two stars.

This zoom was created with images from different telescopes stitched together, covering progressively smaller areas in the sky. The stellar pair––two brown dwarfs––appears as a single source at the end of the video, but astronomers know there are two of them because they periodically eclipse each other. Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, astronomers monitored their orbits and found that they rotate in a rosette-like pattern that can only be explained by the presence of a planet in a perpendicular orbit, as shown in the animation at the end of this video.

Credit: ESO / L. Calçada / N. Risinger / Digitized Sky Survey 2/DESI Legacy Survey/D. Lang (Perimeter Institute)
Duration: 1 minute
Release Date: April 16, 2025

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