Astronomers have discovered even more about a planetary system 130 light years from Earth. These observations mark the first result of as exoplanet survey called LEECH.

HR8799 is a young star only 30 million years old. It was first directly spotted along with three planets in 2008. A fourth planet was found in 2010.

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"This star was therefore a target of choice for the LEECH survey, offering the opportunity to acquire new images and better define the dynamical properties of the exoplanets orbiting," said Christian Veillet, director of the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory (LBTO).

It was February 2013 when the LEECH (LBT Exozodi Exoplanet Common Hunt) survey began at the Large Binocular Telescope in southeastern Arizona. The aim is to search and characterize young and adolescent exoplanets in the near-infrared spectrum.

"The LBT enables us to look at those planets at a wavelength that nobody else is really using. Because they are gas giants and still very young, they glow nicely at the L' band, and because they appear so bright there, they stand out, allowing us to observe closer to the star. This has allowed us to nail down the orbits of this system, which is pretty far away," Veillet explained.

The study was focused more on the planet architecture of the HR 8799 system. Anne-Lise Marie who is the lead author and her team sought to constrain the orbital parameters of the four known giant planets and how the physical properties of a putative fifth planet inside the known planets.

Result of the study show the architecture of the system based on multiple double resonances. It shows each of the three outer planets takes about twice as long to complete an orbit around the star as its neighbor closer to the star.

Details of the study were published in a journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

TagsLarge Binocular Telescope Aids in Finding Alien Exoplanet, LEECH, Stars, HR8799, binocular telescope, exoplanet