The animation shows the orbits of the six planets discovered transiting the bright K-dwarf star HD110067. The six planets were found from a combination of NASA/TESS and ESA/CHEOPS observations. They have sizes between Earth and Neptune, although they are very likely a mix of hydrogen gas, water and rock. All six planets orbit in a so-called resonant chain - this synchronised dance means the ratio of planet orbits form perfect fractions - in this case 3/2 and 4/3.
Resonances lend themselves perfectly to music, and the notes played as each planet passes across (or transits) its star are each tied to the orbital frequency of the orbit. In reality the six planets play a G7sus4 chord with a base note of F-24 (1.27microHz).
The background image is from raw data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS; processed by Ethan Kruse). Animations, annotations and sound composition all made by Dr Hugh Osborn.
For clarity the planets have been scaled up relative to their star, and the orbits have been precisely set to the nearest resonant orbit (while in reality they are ~0.1% away). Annotations describe the global effort to solve this mysterious system, including observations from NASA TESS, ESA CHEOPS, radial velocities from HARPS-N & Carmenes, and ground-based photometry from NGTS, Saint-Ex, Tierras, LCO and MuSCAT telescopes.
The paper, "A resonant sextuplet of sub-Neptunes around the bright star HD 110067" by Luque, Osborn, Leleu, Pallé et al is released on 30/11/2023 [ Ссылка ]
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U8jQEnpQfBM/maxresdefault.jpg)