ESA spacecraft uses 'wobbly' stars to discover huge hidden worlds

Astronomers are buzzing over a groundbreaking discovery made by the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Gaia spacecraft, which found two giant cosmic objects hiding in plain sight.

For the first time, scientists have detected an exoplanet, which is a planet outside of our own solar system, purely on the “wobble” it creates on its star with its gravitational force.

New research has confirmed the existence of a giant exoplanet, dubbed a “Super-Jupiter”, and a mysterious brown dwarf, which are both unexpectedly orbiting low-mass stars in an “extremely rare” phenomemon.

The exoplanet, named Gaia-4b, orbits a star 244 light-years away, whereas the Gaia-5b, the brown dwarf – an astronomical object that is intermediate between a planet and a star – orbits a star around 134 light-years from Earth.

The ESA says their existence challenges current theories of planet formation, so scientists will endeavor to use Gaia data to understand how these planets came to be.

The Gaia spacecraft has given scientists the “best insight yet” of what our galaxy – the Milky Way – looks like. Its sky-scanning mission came to an end last month (January 15) after mapping the Milky Way for more than 10 years.

The Gaia telescope aimed to create an accurate and detailed 3D map of billions of stars in our galaxy. Its findings have flipped astronomers' understanding of the Milky Way on its head and have led to a decade of discoveries beyond our galaxy.

Its latest data has confirmed the presence of two giant celestial objects by spotting “wobbling” stars when a planet in its orbit creates a tiny gravitational “tug”.

“Gaia-4b is about twelve times more massive than Jupiter. With an orbital period of 570 days, it is a relatively cold gas giant planet,”