Stars aren’t always good neighbors. They can drag away planets from other stars. In some cases, they grab the planets for themselves. In others, they fling the planets away, to wander through space alone. And they might even fling away two or more planets, which then move through space together as “Jumbos” – Jupiter-Mass Binary Objects.
Astronomers first reported these odd pairings a year ago. Webb Space Telescope found them in the Trapezium – a cluster of young stars in the Orion Nebula.
The nebula has given birth to a couple of thousand stars, all of which are no more than a couple of million years old. And the stars are tightly packed, so close encounters between them are common. During those encounters, one star can pull planets away from another. In fact, Webb revealed more than 500 giant planets that aren’t orbiting any star.
About one-tenth of the planets are in binaries – the Jumbos. A study a few months ago said that, if two planets in a star system are aligned in just the right way, a passing star could pull away both of them. But the planets would stay together – zipping through a cluster of young stars and stolen planets.
The Orion Nebula is visible to the unaided eye. It looks like a faint, fuzzy star – energized by the light of several brilliant stars in the Trapezium. The nebula climbs into good view after midnight. It stands high in the south-southwest at dawn, below the stars of Orion’s Belt.
Script by Damond Benningfield