Artist's impression of the hypothesized "Planet Nine"
Date: 10 December 2020
Satellite: Hubble Space Telescope
Depicts: HD 106906 b
Copyright: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser, CC BY 4.0
An 11-Jupiter-mass exoplanet called HD 106906 b occupies an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away and may be offering clues to something that might be much closer to home: a hypothesized distant member of our Solar System dubbed "Planet Nine." This is the first time that astronomers have been able to measure the motion of a massive Jupiter-like planet that is orbiting very far away from its host stars and visible debris disc.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Last Update: 21 December 2020
