Most of the stars across the Milky Way are small red dwarfs like TOI-6894, which has only 20 percent the mass of our Sun.
But an international team of astronomers have detected the unmistakable signature of a gas giant planet orbiting the undersized TOI-6894, according to a study in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The planet has a slightly larger radius than Saturn, but only half its mass. It orbits its star in a little over three days.
Its existence was then confirmed by ground-based telescopes, including Chile’s Very Large Telescope.
Another co-author, Vincent Van Eylen, of University College London, said it was an “intriguing discovery”.
“This is one of the goals of the search for more exoplanets. By finding planetary systems different from our solar system, we can test our models and better understand how our own solar system formed.”
The most prominent theory for how planets form is called core accretion.
Under this theory, it is difficult for low-mass stars to host giant planets because there is not enough gas and dust to begin building a core in the first place.
However neither theory seems to explain the existence of the newly discovered planet, TOI-6894b, the researchers said.
Most of the gas giants discovered outside our Solar System so far have been what are known as “hot Jupiters”, where temperatures soar well over 1,000 degrees Celsius.
“Temperatures are low enough that atmospheric observations could even show us ammonia, which would be the first time it is found in an exoplanet atmosphere,“ said study co-author Amaury Triaud of Birmingham University.
The James Webb space telescope is scheduled to turn its powerful gaze towards the planet in the next year, which could help uncover some more mysteries of this strange planet.
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