• A team of scientists from Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru, and University of Delhi have seen for the first time indications of a massive planet orbiting a low mass X-ray binary star system.
• The technique that has been used, namely, X-ray observations, is a new way of detecting exoplanets.
• The results have been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
• The system is nearly 30,000 light years away and the planet is expected to be nearly 8,000 times as massive as the earth.

Paired with neutron star

• The star system in question, MXB 1658-298 is an X-ray binary and a part of the constellation Ophiuchus (serpent bearer).
• X-ray binaries consist of a pair of stars orbiting each other of which one is compact one such as a black hole or a neutron star (in this case, a neutron star).
• The neutron star draws matter from its less-massive companion. The mass when drawn generates X-rays which are detected by detectors placed in satellites in space.
• “Till now, there are various indirect methods [of detecting exoplanets] such as transit photometry and microlensing,”
• X-ray observations are done from space observatories such as NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
• “In this particular work, we have used data from XMM-Newton and archival data from RXTE (NASA) and some earlier published values of mid-eclipse times,”.