Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet with a special property. The cosmic giant left behind a gas trail more than 563,000 kilometers long as it traveled through space.
This makes the cosmic “tail” seven times larger than the circumference of the exoplanet itself. Exoplanets are located outside our solar system and therefore orbit a star other than our sun.
The exoplanet has been named WASP-69b. according to Scientific alert The exoplanet is roughly the size of Jupiter and is about 160 light-years away from Earth.
According to astronomers, the reason for the unusually long path of gas in the exoplanet's orbit can be found. WASP-69b orbits the star remarkably tightly. The star's radiation would blow away the exoplanet's atmosphere and create a trail of gas.
This discovery was made using a large telescope in Hawaii. This allowed astronomers to monitor the exoplanet's developments and conclude that WASP-69b is losing significant amounts of hydrogen and helium, or trace gases that may have come from its atmosphere.
The researchers hope that this discovery will help them learn more about how stars and exoplanets affect each other and how they affect each other's shapes. “There is a lot to discover,” the researchers said. “But WASP-69b won't slow down anytime soon: the star it orbits will die out before WASP-69b's entire atmosphere is ejected into space.”
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