Discovery Alert: The Planet that Shouldn't Be There - NASA Science
Discovery Alert: The Planet that Shouldn't Be There - NASA Science
A large, gaseous planet orbits a red giant star that should have destroyed it. It's 530 light-years from Earth.
Planet 8 Ursae Minoris b orbits a star some 530 light-years away that is in its death throes. A swollen red giant, the star would have been expected to expand beyond the planet’s orbit before receding to its present (still giant) size. In other words, the star would have engulfed and ripped apart any planets orbiting closely around it. Yet the planet remains in a stable, nearly circular orbit.
Could the planet have been captured after the ballooned red dwarf shrank? E.g. a wandering planet. Or could something have made its orbit shift, e.g. if it was farther out and now it’s closer in?
It's possible that it's captured, but the article said that it had a nearly circular orbit, so I think that that makes it less likely.