TOI-3261 b. tagged posts

Astronomers discover a ‘Hot Neptune’ in a Tight Orbit

A dark planet, left, is shown in close orbit around its star, right; some of the planet's atmosphere is being blown outward by the star.
Artist’s concept of “hot Neptune” TOI-3261 b.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/K. Miller (Caltech/IPAC)

A Neptune-sized planet, TOI-3261 b, makes a scorchingly close orbit around its host star. Only the fourth object of its kind ever found, the planet could reveal clues as to how planets such as these form.

An international team of scientists used the NASA space telescope, TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), to discover the exoplanet, then made further observations with ground-based telescopes in Australia, Chile, and South Africa. The measurements placed the new planet squarely in the “hot Neptune desert”—a category of planets with so few members that their scarcity evokes a deserted landscape.

The team, led by astronomer Emma Nabbie of the University of Southern Queensland, pu...

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