The cold super-Jupiter's mass rivals that of some of the largest-known exoplanets.
Astronomers in Poland have discovered a nearby exoplanet more than 11 times the mass of Jupiter, comfortably putting it in the pantheon of the most massive known worlds.
The object is a cold super-Jupiter; simply put, that means it is cold and larger than Jupiter, the measuring stick by which the largest planets are measured. The characteristics of the oversized exoplanet—as well as the star system in which it resides—were described in a paperThe huge world sits in a multi-planet system a little over 300 light-years from Earth in the Great Bear constellation.
“Doppler observations, however, indicated that this was not the end of the story, that there might be another planet out there,” said Andrzej Niedzielski, an astronomer at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland, in a universityand Texas’ roughly 30-foot Hobby-Eberly telescope, the team scrutinized the system and realized there was another object orbiting the star.
The line between “most massive exoplanet” and “least massive brown dwarf” tends to blur, but at roughly 11 Jupiter masses, the cold super-Jupiter is in the same wheelhouse as the hugeJupiter’s Moon Io Just Sprouted an Enormous New VolcanoAstronomers Precisely Forecast a Black Hole’s Snack Schedule A recurring tidal disruption event was predicted and then came to pass, giving the researchers a chance to predict the black hole's next meal.Is Peak Anime Fiction, as the Kids Say9/16/2024, 12:00 pm
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