Scientists Have Found A Record-Breaking Triple-Star System About 5,000 Light-Years Away
Scientists have spotted a record-breaking triple-star system using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a NASA spacecraft that hunts for exoplanets. The system’s orbit is so tightly bound that it could easily fit between the sun and Mercury.
The newly discovered triple-star system has been designated as TIC 290061484. It is located about 5,000 light-years away in Cygnus, the swan constellation.
The system contains two stars that circle each other once every 1.8 Earth days and a third star that orbits the pair once every 25 Earth days.
It is the tightest orbit of a triple-star system that has ever been found. Previously, the record-holder for the tightest triple-star system orbit was Lamba Tauri. It set the record in 1956, with its third star taking 33 days to go around its inner twin stars.
A team of citizen scientists and professional astronomers who came together to form the Visual Survey Group were responsible for the discovery. The group has been in operation for over a decade.
“Thanks to the compact, edge-on configuration of the system, we can measure the orbits, masses, sizes, and temperatures of its stars,” said Veselin Kostov from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the SETI Institute. “We can study how the system formed and predict how it may evolve.”
Since the stars of TIC 290061484 orbit each other in almost the same plane, the team believes the system is highly stable.
If the stars’ orbits were tilted in different directions, their orbits would be disrupted by each other’s gravitational pulls, which would make the system unstable.
Its stability will only last a few million years, though. As the inner twin stars of the triple-star system get older, they will expand outward and eventually merge.
Inga Av – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
The merging will trigger a huge supernova explosion in 20 to 40 million years. It is unlikely the explosion will affect any life since there don’t seem to be any planets close to the stars that can support life.
According to Saul Rappaport, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the stars may have formed together during the same growth process, preventing planets from forming near any of the stars.
However, it is possible that a distant planet that exists in the TIC 290061484 system is orbiting the three stars.
The astronomers noticed the three-star system due to strobing starlight caused by the stars crossing in front of each other.
They analyzed data from TESS to determine a pattern from the light. Then, they enlisted the help of citizen scientists to look for further signals.
“We’re mainly looking for signatures of compact multi-star systems, unusual pulsating stars in binary systems, and weird objects,” said Rappaport.
“It’s exciting to identify a system like this because they’re rarely found, but they may be more common than current tallies suggest.”
The scientists believe there are many other similar star systems spread across the Milky Way that are just waiting to be discovered.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch in May 2027 and will aid in the search for more star systems. It will provide more detailed images of space than TESS.
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