PSR B1257+12 planets
Pulsar planets · The very first exoplanets
The first planets ever confirmed outside our Solar System were found in a very strange place: orbiting a pulsar, the spinning leftover core of an exploded star. Nobody expected planets there!
- 2,300 light-years awayEven light – the fastest thing there is – needs 2,300 years to get here.
- 1992Discovered
- A pulsar (dead star)Star
Take a closer look
A spinning city-sized star
The pulsar at the centre of this system is the crushed core of a giant star. It is only about the size of a city, yet it weighs more than our Sun. It spins around about 160 times every second, sweeping beams of radio waves across space like a lighthouse.
Dark, dangerous skies
Standing on one of these planets would be nothing like Earth. There would be no warm sunshine, because the pulsar gives off very little visible light. Instead, the planets are blasted by powerful radiation and a fierce wind of tiny particles, making them very unlikely homes for life.
Spooky names
In a public naming contest in 2015, this pulsar and its planets got suitably spooky names. The pulsar is Lich, an undead creature from fantasy stories, and its three planets are Draugr, Poltergeist and Phobetor – names from myths and ghost tales.
How we found out
- 1990
Aleksander Wolszczan discovers the pulsar with the giant Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
- 1992
Wolszczan and Dale Frail notice its super-regular pulses arriving a little early, then a little late – the tug of two orbiting planets.
- 1994
A third, smaller planet is confirmed.
How could planets survive a star exploding?
Maybe they didn’t – they might have formed afterwards, from a disc of debris left around the pulsar.
See it yourself
Only with radio telescopes. But you can point to where it is!
From the encyclopedia
Read the full article on Wikipedia ↗Got it?
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