Authors: Dr. Megan and Brendan

Today's update includes many catalog changes. The highlights include 60 new exoplanets, with 53 new host-stars, and a collection of 42 Jupiter Mass Binary Objects in the Trapezium cluster. It was a good summer for exoplanet announcements, and we have highlighted a couple of our favorites below!

Our update also includes other catalog maintenance, such as:

1. Fixing incidents where duplicate objects were superimposed on each other.
2. Removing a third star that was mistakenly added to a system barycenter in some binary systems.

New Catalog Addition - JuMBOs

Rogue planets, planemo (planetary-mass objects), or free-floating planets are, as the names suggest, planets without a host star. Rogue planets are formed by two mechanisms:

1. Within the disk of a young star, to be later ejected from the system due to some gravitational effect from other nearby stars
2. Or, similarly to stars, are condensed directly from a giant molecular cloud.

These formation mechanisms hint star clusters would be a good place to search for these objects, and new observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), with its unprecedented sensitivity, have shown that to be true.

One very exciting, and unexpected discovery by astronomers using JWST, are the so-called Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, also known as JuMBOs. JuMBOs are rogue planets in binary systems with another rogue planet. How JuMBOs form is a particularly interesting question. If they are ejected from solar systems, how do two planets end up staying together as they travel through space? And for those planets forming from the giant molecular clouds, astronomers expect only very massive planets to form, but they are finding notably small bodies making up the JuMBOs. While astronomers aren’t quite sure of the answer yet, they have lots of data to work with. For example, in just the Trapezium Cluster (located in the Orion Nebula), more than 40 JuMBOs were discovered!

We added 42 JuMBO systems in the Trapezium Cluster to SpaceEngine, and we hope you enjoy exploring them. The Trapezium Cluster itself is also now a searchable object in SpaceEngine.

JuMBO 2 B is a ringed planemo in the Orion Nebula.

Planet Highlight - TIC 241249530 b

The newly discovered planet TIC 241249530 b may give astronomers new insights into the formation and evolution of some of the hottest planets we know of: hot Jupiters. TIC 241249530 b, which orbits its host star in the most eccentric orbit known to date, is thought to be a hot Jupiter-progenitor. Its extreme orbit, and the structure of the system it resides in, might hold the secret to hot Jupiter formation.

Hot Jupiters have very tight orbits, and our current understanding of planet formation suggests such planets would not be able to form that close to their host stars. They would have to form at wider orbits and migrate inwards. But how does this migration happen?

In the case of TIC 241249530 b, a secondary star in the system is the likely cause. TIC 241249530 b probably formed as a colder planet on a wider, more circular orbit, but over time the gravitational effects from the second star in the system pushed it into the highly eccentric orbit observed now. In another billion years or so, TIC 241249530 b will settle into a more circular, close-in orbit where the planet will be heated significantly by its host star, turning it into a hot Jupiter. Few systems like this have been observed because this is a temporary orbital configuration. Hopefully when we have a full understanding of the orbital dynamics at play here will lead to a better understanding of one way hot Jupiters form.

You can see the TIC 241249530 system in its present-day orbital configuration in SpaceEngine.

The highly elliptical orbit of TIC 241249530 b.

Further Reading:

JuMBOs: Physics World Article
TIC 241249530 b: MIT Press Release

Build 0.990.48.2034, Changes and Updates from the Previous Version:

• Updated the exoplanet and host star catalog (new planets and hosts), including new Jupiter Mass Binary Objects (JuMBOs)
• Fixed duplicates in the white dwarf catalogs, so white dwarf binaries won’t have an extra white dwarf at the barycenter
• Fixed an assortment of one-off errors in object properties in the catalogs
• Fixed a bug where planemo displayed large numbers for daylight hours at equator and an annual fraction of polar day at current latitude
• Fixed issue with AgX tonemapping name

Please see the SpaceEngine Steam store page for other recent changelogs.