A planetary system can also form a harmony when planets, whose orbital period ratios form simple fractions, regularly attract each other with their gravity. When one planet takes three days to orbit its star and its neighbour takes two days, for example. Using the CHEOPS space telescope, scientists from the University of Bern, the University of Geneva, and the National Center of Competence in Research PlanetS, found such relationships between five of six planets orbiting the star TOI-178, located over 200 light-years away from Earth.<\/p>\n
Astrophysicist Adrien Leleu of the Center for Space and Habitability of the University of Bern said: \u201cThis result surprised us, as previous observations with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) of NASA pointed toward a three planets system, with two planets orbiting very close together. We therefore observed the system with additional instruments, such as the ground-based ESPRESSO spectrograph<\/a> at the European Southern Observatory (ESO)\u2019s Paranal Observatory in Chile, but the results were inconclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n