Astronomers Find Severely Tilted Planetary System around Star Kepler-56

Astronomers have detected a weird star system that has two planets orbiting the star with a tilt of about 45 degrees to the line of sight from Earth.

The curious case of Kepler-56 shows that there are star systems that have misaligned planets without the presence of a Hot Jupiter.

Hot Jupiters are behemoth gas planets that orbit very close to their parent stars and generally have out of whack orbits. However, the latest study was conducted on a star-system with no such oddball.

The discovery was made by an international team of researchers using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope. The host star of this bizarre system is named Kepler-56. It is about 3,000 light years from earth and has a radius about four times larger than our sun. The star has three planets of which two are in close orbits and one is farther away.

Analysis of asteroseismic readings showed that the axis of the star was tilting at about 45 degrees with respect to the plane of orbits of the planets. Asteroseismology is technique based on studying the pulsation periods of stars and is used to study the internal structure of stars, according to nbc news.

According to Steve Kawaler, planets usually form from the dust cloud that's swirling along the equatorial plane of the star system. In our solar system too, planets orbit within seven degrees of the plane of our sun's equator. Kawaler is an Iowa State University professor of physics and astronomy and is also a co-author of the current research.

Misaligned planets around a star-system reveal that they usually have a traumatic birth, with other huge planets or stars exerting a gravitational pull on them.

According to the astronomers, a massive outer planet is controlling the orbits of the inner, smaller planets in this particular star-system.

"It issues a continuous tug on the orbit of the smaller ones, pulling them into their inclined orbits," Kawaler said in a news release.

The study," Stellar Spin-Orbit Misalignment in a Multiplanet System," is published in the Oct. 18 issue of the journal Science.