Artist’s impression of a gas giant planet in formation within the protoplanetary disc of a young star. Credit: NASA / JPL
20 years after they were first discovered, ‘hot Jupiters’, gas giant planets that orbit very close to their star, are still enigmatic objects. Using spectropolarimeter ESPaDOnS on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, an international team led by Jean-François Donati (CNRS) has shown that such bodies may only take several million years to migrate close to their newly formed star. The discovery should shed light on how solar systems like – or unlike – our own Solar System form and evolve over the course of their existence.
In the Solar System, rocky planets like the Earth and Mars are found near the Sun, whereas gas giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn are further awa...
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