TIL of COCONUTS-2b, a giant gas planet that takes over 1 million years to orbit around its star
TIL of COCONUTS-2b, a giant gas planet that takes over 1 million years to orbit around its star
Wow ..... 1 million years to orbit a star .... that's coconuts!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Companions_on_Ultrawide_Orbits
These are exactly the kind of dorks that I have the utmost respect and admiration for.
It’s also over 7500 AU (or, over 697,500,000,000 miles) away from its host star. Meaning it’s over 7500x further from its star than we are from ours. I suppose it makes sense that it’d take that long to complete an orbit!
I wonder what tech we have that can measure something that slow? Wouldn’t it just look stationary?
It does basically look stationary, but if you know the masses of the planet and the star and know the radius of orbit, then you can determine what the speed must be for it to be a stable orbit.
Very accurate tech :)
I wonder how life would evolve on a planet like that. Could evolution account for things like seasons that last hundreds of thousands of years? Or would entire species rise and fall between each and every ice age?
Did you see the orbit semi major axis? That gas gaint is so far away from the star it's probably orbit even outside host star's heliosphere. For reference, pluto's semi major is 39.48AU, and this coconuts-2b is 7506AU.
The star is about one-third the mass of the Sun,
So forget anything like receiving enough energy from sun to have any chemical reaction going. It would be too cold for anything organic.(in our standard to even jitter around.)
39AU, that puts it in perspective. I imagine the gas giant generates more heat than it receives from the sun.