CI Tauri


CI Tauri is a young star, about 2 million years old, located approximately 500 light years away in the constellation Taurus. In 2016 a planet, CI Tauri b, was discovered orbiting it, and in 2018 the possible detection of three more planets was announced.

CI Tauri b

The discovery of CI Tauri b was notable because it is a hot Jupiter, which are supposed to take a minimum of 10 million years to form, and are often thought to be too close to their parent stars to have formed there. It is about 12 times the mass of Jupiter and completes each orbit in 9 days.

2018 discovery

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array to look for 'siblings' of CI Tauri b, a team of researchers detected three distinct gaps in the protoplanetary disk which their theoretical modelling suggests are caused by three other planets. The two outer planets are believed to be about the mass of Saturn, while the inner planet's mass is around the same as CI Tauri b. Two of the new planets are similarly located to those inferred in the HL Tauri protoplanetary disk.
If this discovery is confirmed this would be the most massive collection of exoplanets ever detected at this age with its four planets spanning a factor of a thousand in orbital radius.