HD106906 b

A strange exoplanet, orbiting a double-star 336 light years away, has caught the interest of astronomers. The oddball behaviour of the planet, HD106906 b, provide clues about our own mysterious Planet Nine — if it exists.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2020

Key-Points

HD106906 b and its behaviour have been described in a study published in The Astronomical Journal on December 10.

HD106906 b is not a new discovery: It appears in archival images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004.

Planet Nine is an elusive, distant planet in our own Solar System. Although it has not been found yet, it has been predicted by a series of studies over the last few years, and has been described by astronomers as “hiding in plain sight”. If it exists, Planet Nine is 10 times as massive as Earth.

Both planets (assuming Planet Nine is real) reside far out in their respective stellar systems. Both orbit their respective stars at an extreme tilt. And both are massive enough to influence the behaviour of other objects in their respective regions.

The authors of a recent research paper investigated how HD106906 b could have reached such a distance from its star, and raised the question whether something similar happened with Planet Nine.