1st known 'Trojan' planets discovered locked in the exact same orbit around a star
Astronomers have discovered the first evidence of ultra-rare 'Trojan' planets: two sibling planets bound on the same orbit around the same star.
Trojan planets get their unusual name from the two asteroid clusters seen around Jupiter, which, upon their discovery, were split into Greeks and Trojans based on their proximity to the gas giant's gravitationally stable Lagrange points. To look for signs of Trojans hiding out in space, the astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array — a set of 66 sub-radio range telescopes in Chile's Atacama Desert. Millimeter and submillimeter light is typically given off by very cold pockets of gas and dust, which means it is a perfect spectrum in which to search for the first or final stirrings of planets.
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