The strength of the astronomy community is the use of tools that weren't originally intended for. Analyzing data collected for one purpose and looking for hints of another is a favorite pastime of many a professional astronomer. The tradition is alive and well, with a team reanalyzing the first few data sets. They found hints of exoplanets, and it turns out the probe launched in 2013 is a much better planet hunter than previously thought.
The original mission of Gaia was to track stars very carefully. It wanted to create a catalog of over 1 billion objects. The cataloging of 1.8 billion stars has far exceeded expectations. It uses three main instruments. Astro is an instrument used to measure the position of stars. The instrument that measures the luminosity of its subjects is covered by photometry. The RVS instrument uses the radial-velocity technique to measure the speed at which objects are thinking.
Combining data from these three instruments allows Gaia to see how far away hundreds of millions of objects are. It has delivered spectacularly on its promise, with its data underpinning dozens of papers ranging from observations of cluster mergers to the dimmest galaxy ever discovered.
The international team of researchers involved in analyzing and releasing Gaia's data sets thought they might be able to find other ghosts in the star cataloger's data. Thousands of exoplanets have been found thus far, many of them using the radial-velocity method of watching a star move back and forth as the planet's gravity makes it jiggle in the sky. They believed that Gaia could do that.
It was well placed to detect minute changes in a star's position when it was disturbed by a planet. The team used photometric data sets from all three instruments. TESS's exoplanet survey results were fed into a training program that helped train the program on what to look for in a positive exoplanet finding.
They found at least two new planets. These two planets are hot Jupiters that have an orbital period so fast that they are locked to their star. The existence of the planets was confirmed by observations from TESS, an observatory focused on exoplanet hunting.
TESS has a different observational strategy. It focuses on the measurement of a star that might host a planet. As part of its whole sky observational requirements, Gaia takes less frequent images of its target. That didn't stop the researchers from trying. They were able to detect not only the two confirmed new planets but also 41 other exoplanet candidates that still need further validation before officially being accepted into the ranks of known exoplanets.
It was an excellent record for Gaia to look for things she wasn't designed for. The next release of Gaia data is expected in June this year. There is a good chance that more exoplanets are waiting to be found with the new data.
You can learn more.
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