AstroUnit

For the first time, a giant exoplanet has been discovered orbiting a dead star (which in this case happens to a white dwarf) every 1.4 days. The planet is roughly the same size as Jupiter and is no more than 14 times as massive and has an equilibrium temperature of 165 K. The mass of the white dwarf is approximately 0.5 solar masses and with the radius roughly 10% that of the Sun. The groundbreaking discovery demonstrated that giant planets can be scattered into tight orbits without being tidally disrupted, and motivates searches for smaller transiting planets around white dwarfs. NGC 2392: A planetary nebula, a phase that results when a star like the Sun becomes a red giant and sheds its outer layers. Source:  Chandra Exoplanet research is clearly amongst the most interesting research topics in astronomy. With the advancement of high-quality telescopes and detectors, thousands of exoplanets have been discovered and the numbers are only projected to surge in the coming years. Norma...

A team of astronomers has discovered a new exoplanet named TOI-824 b orbiting a nearby star TOI-824 which is only 208 light-years away from us. The planet is massive in size with a mass equivalent to almost 19 times that of the Earth and has a radius equal to 3 times that of the Earth. The planet has an orbital period of 1.393 days and has a mean density of roughly 4 gm/cc making it more than twice as dense as Neptune. The discovery was made using data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).                        An artist’s impression of an exoplanet. Source:  Alpha Coders As the name suggests, an exoplanet is a planet outside the solar system. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was made in 1992 by astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail. On 6 October 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star. This discovery was groundbreaking and opened...