An artists impression of GJ 436b can be seen in the background in this image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Astronomers have discovered a comet-like exoplanet that trails a huge, Rapunzel-like hair made of gas behind it. The research team focused the Hubble Space Telescope on an exoplanet that had already been seen losing its atmosphere, which forms an enormous cloud of hydrogen, giving the planet the appearance of a giant comet. During earlier observations in 2015, it was not possible to cover the whole cloud, whose shape was predicted by numerical simulations. Thanks to these new observations, however, the scientists have finally been able to confirm the initial predictions.
Exoplanet GJ 436b is similar in size to Neptune (i.e. about four times larger than Earth)...
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