A TAXONOMY of planets is emerging fast. On June 19th a group of researchers led by Andrew Howard of the California Institute of Technology divided bodies smaller than Neptune into two classes, based on both their current composition and a consequent presumption about how they formed. Now, another group of astronomers, led by Vardan Adibekyan of the Astrophysics and Space Science Institute in Porto, Portugal, have performed a similar trick on gas giants, the largest type of planet, which are represented in the solar system by Jupiter and Saturn.
The team’s work, just published in Astronomy and Astrophysics, suggests gas giants come in two types, with intermediate forms being rare. The smaller type have a mass up to four times that of Jupiter. The larger have between ten and 20 times Jupiter’s mass. Jupiter, chosen as a reference because it is the solar system’s largest planet, has 320 times the mass of Earth.
Using the “Extrasolar...Continue reading
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