A five star, doubly-eclipsing star system

Astronomers at the Open University have discovered the first quintuple star system containing two eclipsing binary stars. Details of the five star system, the first of its kind to be found, will be presented by Marcus Lohr of the Open University in a talk on Wednesday 8 July at the National Astronomy Meeting at Venue Cymru, Llandudno, Wales.
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The two sets of stars are separated by about 21 billion km, rather larger than the size of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun. The four stars were subsequently observed spectroscopically – its light was broken up into different wavelengths – so that the signatures of the different stars could be studied in detail. This unexpectedly revealed the presence of a fifth star, up to 2 billion km away from the detached binary, but not apparently producing any additional eclipses.
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dv said:

A five star, doubly-eclipsing star system

Astronomers at the Open University have discovered the first quintuple star system containing two eclipsing binary stars. Details of the five star system, the first of its kind to be found, will be presented by Marcus Lohr of the Open University in a talk on Wednesday 8 July at the National Astronomy Meeting at Venue Cymru, Llandudno, Wales.
—-
The two sets of stars are separated by about 21 billion km, rather larger than the size of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun. The four stars were subsequently observed spectroscopically – its light was broken up into different wavelengths – so that the signatures of the different stars could be studied in detail. This unexpectedly revealed the presence of a fifth star, up to 2 billion km away from the detached binary, but not apparently producing any additional eclipses.
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I’ve been taking a bit of interest in multiple star systems lately, because from Kepler data it looks as if the orbital radii of “hot Jupiters” and other planets is remarkably similar to that of multiple stars. For example, when plotted on a logarithmic scale of orbital period the mode (most frequent) orbital period of both stars and planets is about 5 days. And for both the curve of probability vs distance is very flat.

This strongly suggests that the formation mechanism for large planets and for stars is the same – which is totally at odds with the standard explanation for the origin of the large planets in our solar system.

Sometime in the future I want to look into this in detail.

mollwollfumble said:

dv said:

A five star, doubly-eclipsing star system

Astronomers at the Open University have discovered the first quintuple star system containing two eclipsing binary stars. Details of the five star system, the first of its kind to be found, will be presented by Marcus Lohr of the Open University in a talk on Wednesday 8 July at the National Astronomy Meeting at Venue Cymru, Llandudno, Wales.
—-
The two sets of stars are separated by about 21 billion km, rather larger than the size of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun. The four stars were subsequently observed spectroscopically – its light was broken up into different wavelengths – so that the signatures of the different stars could be studied in detail. This unexpectedly revealed the presence of a fifth star, up to 2 billion km away from the detached binary, but not apparently producing any additional eclipses.
—-

I’ve been taking a bit of interest in multiple star systems lately, because from Kepler data it looks as if the orbital radii of “hot Jupiters” and other planets is remarkably similar to that of multiple stars. For example, when plotted on a logarithmic scale of orbital period the mode (most frequent) orbital period of both stars and planets is about 5 days. And for both the curve of probability vs distance is very flat.

This strongly suggests that the formation mechanism for large planets and for stars is the same – which is totally at odds with the standard explanation for the origin of the large planets in our solar system.

Sometime in the future I want to look into this in detail.

Just calculated the histogram of orbital periods of eclipsing binary stars from Kepler data, the mode is 0.35 days, but there is a peak near 5 days. (What I said above about 5 days was based on data for spectroscopic binaries).

mollwollfumble said:

Just calculated the histogram of orbital periods of eclipsing binary stars from Kepler data, the mode is 0.35 days, but there is a peak near 5 days. (What I said above about 5 days was based on data for spectroscopic binaries).

The point I’m trying to make here is that eclipsing binaries with an orbital period of 365 days or more are very rare. Must are much closer together.

Wow. Any nearby planets would have an awesome view. I guess planets are pretty unlikely though.

mollwollfumble said:

dv said:

A five star, doubly-eclipsing star system

Astronomers at the Open University have discovered the first quintuple star system containing two eclipsing binary stars. Details of the five star system, the first of its kind to be found, will be presented by Marcus Lohr of the Open University in a talk on Wednesday 8 July at the National Astronomy Meeting at Venue Cymru, Llandudno, Wales.
—-
The two sets of stars are separated by about 21 billion km, rather larger than the size of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun. The four stars were subsequently observed spectroscopically – its light was broken up into different wavelengths – so that the signatures of the different stars could be studied in detail. This unexpectedly revealed the presence of a fifth star, up to 2 billion km away from the detached binary, but not apparently producing any additional eclipses.
—-

I’ve been taking a bit of interest in multiple star systems lately, because from Kepler data it looks as if the orbital radii of “hot Jupiters” and other planets is remarkably similar to that of multiple stars. For example, when plotted on a logarithmic scale of orbital period the mode (most frequent) orbital period of both stars and planets is about 5 days. And for both the curve of probability vs distance is very flat.

This strongly suggests that the formation mechanism for large planets and for stars is the same – which is totally at odds with the standard explanation for the origin of the large planets in our solar system.

Sometime in the future I want to look into this in detail.

Perhaps their are multiple methods of solar system formation depending on local conditions, that might more sense than trying to explain how hot Jupiters form in other solar system using our solar system as the template