You can discover new planets!

The biggest stars in astronomy are actually on earth, right here at the University of Toronto. Ray Jayawardhana, David Lafrenière and Marten van Kerkwijk are now world-famous for their 2008 discovery of a new planet eight times the size of Jupiter. The team led by RayJay, as he is known, has captured an historic picture of this new planet orbiting a star 500 light years away.

In September, 2008, the U of T team of David Lafreniere, Ray Jayawardhana and Martin van Kerkwijk from Astronomy and Astrophysics made history by unveiling the first-ever photograph of a likely planet orbiting a sun-like star. 

“This is the first time we have seen a planetary mass object in a likely orbit around a star like our sun,” said postdoctoral student David Lafreniere.  “The existence of a planet so far from its parent star comes as a surprise and raises a host of new questions about planetary formation that will be pondered by astronomers around the world for decades to come.”  Until now, the only planet-like bodies that have been directly imaged outside of the solar system are either free floating in space — not found around a star — or orbit brown dwarfs.

The work that led to this discovery is part of a survey of more than 85 stars in the Upper Scorpius association, a group of young stars formed about five million years ago.  The survey uses the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii which has high-resolution adaptive optics capabilities.  “We targeted young stars so that any planetary mass object they hosted would not have had time to cool and thus would still be relatively bright,” said Marten van Kerkwijk.

Star Trails Over Gemini North
Credit: Gemini Observatory

“The discovery is yet another reminder of the truly remarkable diversity of worlds out there and it’s a strong hint that nature may have more than one mechanism for producing planetary mass companions to normal stars,” says Ray Jayawardhana, who is writing a book on extra-solar planets called World’s Beyond.

The world pays attention when U of T makes a discovery and this one, published in the scientific journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, generated international media attention showcasing how U of T stands out in the international community for attracting the world’s best minds and leading the way in groundbreaking discoveries.