Exoplanet with far-flung orbit 336 light-years away may help solve mysteries closer to home. Here’s why

This post was shared on the official Instagram account of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Do you remember learning the phrase “My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Noodles,” to remember the names of all the eight planets in our solar system? Well, scientists are researching the existence of a ninth planet beyond the Kuiper Belt, a circumstellar disc beyond Neptune. The discovery of an exoplanet with a far-flung orbit 336 light-years away may offer clues about “Planet Nine” which might exist in our very own solar system.

This illustration is credited to NASA, ESA, and M. Kornmesser (ESA/Hubble).(Instagram/@nasahubble)

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shared this post on their official Instagram account on December 11. The caption shared along the illustration describes what it depicts. It reads, “A planet in an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away may offer a clue to a mystery much closer to home: a hypothesized, distant body in 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 disk. This disk is similar to our Kuiper Belt of small, icy bodies beyond Neptune”.

The text further goes on to state, “In our own solar system, the suspected Planet Nine would also lie far outside of the Kuiper Belt on a similarly strange orbit. Though the search for a Planet Nine continues, this exoplanet discovery is evidence that such oddball orbits are possible”.

According to an official blog post shared by NASA, exoplanet HD 106906 b was discovered in 2013 with the Magellan Telescopes at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Yet, astronomers did not know anything about the planet’s orbit until recently.

Based on the data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope it is affirmed that the planet is located nearly 68 billion miles away from its twin stars, which is more than 730 times the distance of Earth from the Sun. Its orbit is 15,000-year-long.

Could a giant planet such as HD 106906 b be orbiting our Sun?

Astronomers have found circumstantial evidence for Planet Nine. They have discovered a cluster of small celestial bodies that move in strange orbits beyond Neptune. Some astronomers believe that the objects are shepherded together by the gravitational pull of a massive, unseen planet.

You can read more about this and other alternative theories about Planet Nine here.

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