02-21-2020, 12:52 AM
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/20/world...ction-scn/
Every 18 hours, a newly discovered exoplanet found 2,000 light-years away from Earth completes an orbit around its star -- and potentially takes another step closer to being ripped apart.
The exoplanet, known as NGTS-10b, is considered to be a "hot Jupiter" -- a type of gas giant exoplanet that is 20% bigger than Jupiter and twice its mass. (An exoplanet is any planet found orbiting a star outside of our solar system.)
Astronomers found the exoplanet with the Next-Generation Transit Survey, a telescope collaboration at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile. They used the transit method, which involves observing stars and noting dips in their brightness as evidence for planets orbiting them. This particular exoplanet's star was one out of 100,000 that caught their attention due to the frequent dips they observed.
The star is similar to our sun, but it's 1,000 degrees cooler. The exoplanet orbits it about 27 times closer than Mercury to our own sun, which is why it only takes 18 hours to complete an orbit. It's also tidally locked, which means that one side of the planet perpetually faces the star and reaches about 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface.
Wow, it's rather surprising that such a thing can exist . I would've expected it to have long since been ripped apart by tidal forces by now!
Though, I suspect that that's probably what's going to happen pretty soon anyway. (And, since it's 2,000 light years away - it may well have happened within the last 2,000 years, and we'd be none the wiser !)
Every 18 hours, a newly discovered exoplanet found 2,000 light-years away from Earth completes an orbit around its star -- and potentially takes another step closer to being ripped apart.
The exoplanet, known as NGTS-10b, is considered to be a "hot Jupiter" -- a type of gas giant exoplanet that is 20% bigger than Jupiter and twice its mass. (An exoplanet is any planet found orbiting a star outside of our solar system.)
Astronomers found the exoplanet with the Next-Generation Transit Survey, a telescope collaboration at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile. They used the transit method, which involves observing stars and noting dips in their brightness as evidence for planets orbiting them. This particular exoplanet's star was one out of 100,000 that caught their attention due to the frequent dips they observed.
The star is similar to our sun, but it's 1,000 degrees cooler. The exoplanet orbits it about 27 times closer than Mercury to our own sun, which is why it only takes 18 hours to complete an orbit. It's also tidally locked, which means that one side of the planet perpetually faces the star and reaches about 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface.
Wow, it's rather surprising that such a thing can exist . I would've expected it to have long since been ripped apart by tidal forces by now!
Though, I suspect that that's probably what's going to happen pretty soon anyway. (And, since it's 2,000 light years away - it may well have happened within the last 2,000 years, and we'd be none the wiser !)
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