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For The First Time, Astronomers Detect Rugby-Ball Shape of a Deformed Exoplanet - ScienceAlert

For The First Time, Astronomers Detect Rugby-Ball Shape of a Deformed Exoplanet - ScienceAlert

For The First Time, Astronomers Detect Rugby-Ball Shape of a Deformed Exoplanet - ScienceAlert
Jan 17, 2022 1 min, 2 secs

This achievement, courtesy of the CHEOPS space telescope, could help us to understand how these exoplanets come to exist in such extreme orbits.

The exoplanet is called WASP-103b, orbiting a star called WASP-103 some 1,800 light-years away.

It's around 1.5 times the mass and twice the size of Jupiter, orbiting its star so closely that it goes around roughly once a day.

This is when the exoplanet passes between us and the star, causing minute changes in the starlight; a faint dip when the exoplanet passes in front of the star, and a much fainter one when it passes behind, called a light curve.

Although its mass is 1.5 times that of Jupiter, its size is around twice.

Knowing the size of the core of this exoplanet will also be important to better understand how it formed," explains Susana Barros of the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences and University of Porto in Portugal.

Studying the star and its strange exoplanet further could help resolve this conundrum

"Future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope can help to better constrain the Love number of WASP-103b and gain an unprecedented view of the interior of this hot Jupiter," the researchers write

"This could help us to better understand these extreme systems."

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

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