The PLATOSpec spectrograph at the La Silla Observatory contributed, through its observations, to a significant discovery describing a young exoplanetary system consisting of a hot Jupiter, a super-Earth, and a brown dwarf in a distant orbit. The inclination and position of the planets’ orbits, as well as their orientation relative to the brown dwarf, indicate a highly dynamic evolution and provide unique insight into the formation of planetary systems. The research results were presented in the journal Nature by an international team led by Matías Jones of the European Southern Observatory, in collaboration with Czech teams.
TOI-201 is a very young star, 1 billion years old, located 365 light-years from the Sun, which hosts two planets. One of the planets is similar to our Jupiter, but orbits TOI-201 once every 53 days. The second, smaller planet—only slightly larger than Earth—orbits this star in 5.8 days. The first planet was discovered in 2019, shortly after the launch of the TESS space observatory. A team led by Czech astronomers operating the PLATOSpec spectrograph helped characterize the second planet. In addition to these two planets, the team detected a transit of the star by another object with an orbital period of 7.9 years. This new object is interesting in that it has a mass equivalent to roughly 16 times that of Jupiter and exhibits the characteristics of a so-called brown dwarf. It is, therefore, an object that did not evolve into a star, nor into a planet. In fact, this is the most distant object ever recorded transiting its star (i.e., passing in front of the star).
Full text: PR ASU, 30.6.2026, web (in Czech)
Další informace a kontakty
- Spektrograph PlatoSpec
- ArXiv preprint: A distant brown dwarf coplanar to a warm Jupiter and a hot super-EarthJones, Matías I. et al., Nature, 17.6.2026
- doc. Dr. rer. nat,, Petr Kabáth, Dipl-Phys., Astronomical Institute ASCR, tel.: 722 446 784, E-mail: petr.kabath@asu.cas.cz
- Pavel Suchan, press and autreach, Astronomical Institute ASCR, tel.: 737 322 815, E-mail: pavel.suchan@asu.cas.cz
