Hot Jupiter TOI-2535 b, About 1,000 Light-Years Away, Stops Transiting: UCLA Team Says an Unseen Neighbor Makes Its Orbit Wobble Like a Top
Los Angeles, California. Astronomers led by the University of California, Los Angeles announced on November 9 the first known disappearing planet, the gas giant TOI-2535 b, located about 1,000 light-years from Earth.
TOI-2535 b is a hot Jupiter, a gas giant that orbits extremely close to its host star, completing one orbit in only 8.25 days. UCLA's release compares that with Mercury, which takes 88 days to circle the Sun, making this planet's orbit about ten times faster.
Researchers observed the planet transit its star multiple times over seven years, until they stopped seeing it altogether. The planet was identified in images of the TOI-2535 star system taken by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, known as TESS, between April 2019 and March 2026. According to the team, the transit signals first grew shallower and shorter over time, then failed to appear at all in 2026. The planet has not truly vanished.
The explanation published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters is gravitational. An unseen neighboring planet is pulling on TOI-2535 b, on an orbit tilted relative to it. The team's calculations show that the two planets make each other's orbits wobble like a top, causing each to circle its star obliquely and vanish from view as the wobble tilts them out of alignment.
Samuel Yee, a 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA and the paper's corresponding author, described the discovery in the release. Follow-up observations included the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.
The team predicts TOI-2535 b will next transit its star sometime in 30 to 50 years, when the wobble brings it back into alignment, while its hidden neighbor may come into view sooner.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons 词条主图：Hot Jupiter
