That planet we thought we found around a bright star? Total ghost story. The world's best space telescope just proved it doesn't exist.
March 23, 2026
Original Paper
A Planetary Illusion's Funeral: Non-detection of a Gaia DR3 Exoplanet Candidate, and the Role of Intermediate-precision Radial Velocities in Gaia Exoplanet Follow-up
arXiv · 2603.19402
The Takeaway
Despite using the ultra-precise Gaia telescope, astronomers found that data artifacts can perfectly mimic a planet's signature. This 'funeral' for a candidate planet shows that even our best technology can still be fooled by ghosts in the data.
From the abstract
The detection of exoplanets using astrometry has long been an area of interest, but is fraught with challenges. The Gaia mission is fundamentally reshaping this field thanks to its unprecedentedly precise all-sky astrometric observations. The 2022 release of Gaia DR3 brought the first exoplanets discovered from the Gaia astrometry, including a new candidate around the bright ($V=6.6$) solar-type star HD 12800. However, two years after announcement, the Gaia exoplanet candidate was retracted. In