在距地球330光年的地方发现“小巨人行星”

It might not be the same as finding Baby Yoda or “Baby Shark,” but scientists have discovered a “baby giant planet” just 330 light-years from Earth.

这可能与发现幼约达或“幼鲨”不同，但科学家们已经发现了一颗距离地球330光年的“幼巨行星”。

Known as 2MASS 1155-7919 b, the exoplanet has a mass just 10 times the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System. It orbits a star that is 5 million years old at 600 times the distance the Earth orbits the Sun, researchers said in a study published in the journal Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.

这颗被称为2MASS 1155-7919 b的系外行星的质量，是太阳系中最大的行星木星的10倍。研究人员发表在《美国天文学会研究笔记》(Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society)杂志上的一项研究称，它围绕着一颗500万年前的恒星运转，其轨道距离是地球围绕太阳运行距离的600倍。

“The dim, cool object we found is very young and only 10 times the mass of Jupiter, which means we are likely looking at an infant planet, perhaps still in the midst of formation,” said the study’s lead author, Annie Dickson-Vandervelde, in a statement.

该研究的主要作者安妮·迪克森-万德维尔德在一份声明中说:“我们发现的这颗昏暗、凉爽的天体非常年轻，只有木星的10倍大，这意味着我们可能看到的是一颗尚在形成中的年轻行星。”

Dickson-Vandervelde continued: “Though lots of other planets have been discovered through the Kepler mission and other missions like it, almost all of those are ‘old’ planets. This is also only the fourth or fifth example of a giant planet so far from its ‘parent’ star, and theorists are struggling to explain how they formed or ended up there.”

Dickson-Vandervelde继续说:“虽然通过开普勒任务和其他类似的任务发现了许多其他行星，但几乎所有这些都是‘古老的’行星。这也是迄今为止发现的第四颗或第五颗远离其母星的巨型行星，理论学家们正在努力解释它们是如何形成或最终形成的。”

2MASS 1155-7919 b is also “closer to Earth than any other of similarly young age found to date,” the researchers added in the statement. A light-year, which measures distance in space, equals about 6 trillion miles.

研究人员在声明中补充说，质量为1155-7919 b的行星也“比迄今发现的任何其它年轻的类似行星更接近地球”。一光年是测量空间距离的单位，相当于6万亿英里。

Additional research is needed to learn how planets such as 2MASS 1155-7919 b have such expansive orbits around their stars, the astronomers added.

天文学家补充说，还需要进一步的研究，来了解像2MASS 1155-7919 b这样的行星，是如何围绕它们的恒星有如此广阔的轨道的。