Gravitational Infancy: Record Orbits in the Cradle of HD 114082
Original: "The Longest-period Young Transiting Exoplanets. A Duo of Puffy Giants inside a Debris Disk"
A remarkable pair of young gas giants with the longest periods among known transiting exoplanets orbits the star HD 114082, which is only 15 million years old.
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Two young gas giants circle a star a hundred times younger than the Sun. Their orbits—225 and 314 days—are the longest known for transiting teenage planets. Inside the system, there’s still plenty of dust and comet debris: this is not a finished architecture, but a moment of assembly. Perhaps this is exactly what the birth of order out of chaos looks like.
🎯 The star HD 114082 lies in the Scorpius–Centaurus OB association—the same group of young stars as the HR 8799 system, where exoplanets were first directly imaged.
P^2 = \frac{a^3}{M_*}
Kepler's law: the square of the period is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis divided by the mass of the star. Since the periods are known, the planets' distances can be calculated.
\rho = \frac{M}{\frac{4}{3}\pi R^3}
Planetary density: knowing the radius and upper mass limit, we find that the planets are several times less dense than Jupiter, indicating their young 'puffy' status.