exoplanet KELT-9b tagged posts

In the scorching atmosphere of exoplanet KELT-9b, even molecules are torn to shreds. Massive gas giants called “hot Jupiters”—planets that orbit too close to their stars to sustain life—are some of the strangest worlds found beyond our solar system. New observations show that the hottest of them all is stranger still, prone to planetwide meltdowns so severe they tear apart the molecules that make up its atmosphere.

Called KELT-9b, the planet is an ultra-hot Jupiter, one of several varieties of exoplanets—planets around other stars—found in our galaxy...

1.Artist illustration of star KELT-9 and its ultrahot planet KELT-9b. (Robert Hurt / NASA/JPL-Caltech)
2. KELT North telescope in Arizona. (KELT Collaboration)

Imagine a planet like Jupiter zipping around its host star every day and a half, superheated to temperatures hotter than most stars and sporting a giant, glowing gas tail like a comet. That is what an international research team led by astronomers at Ohio State and Vanderbilt universities think they have found orbiting a massive star they have labeled KELT-9, located 650 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. With a day-side temperature peaking at 4,600 Kelvin, the newly discovered exoplanet, KELT-9b, is hotter than most stars and only 1,200 Kelvin cooler than our own sun...