A research article published Wednesday in the science journal Nature said the discovery of the planet, named “b Centauri (AB)b” or “b Centauri b,” disproves a widely held belief among astronomers.
“Until now, no planets had been spotted around a star more than three times as massive as the Sun,” wrote the European Southern Observatory, which photographed the planet from its Very Large Telescope in the Chilean desert.
The “B-type” dual star, which sits at the center of a solar system in the Centaurus constellation, is extremely massive and hot. It emits large amounts of high-energy ultraviolet and X-ray radiation, which has “a strong impact on the surrounding gas that should work against planet formation,” the European Southern Observatory said.
“B-type stars are generally considered as quite destructive and dangerous environments, so it was believed that it should be exceedingly difficult to form large planets around them,” Janson said in a news release.
The newly discovered b Centauri (AB)b is an exoplanet, a planet outside our own solar system, and it “is 10 times as massive as Jupiter, making it one of the most massive planets ever found,” the observatory wrote.