atmospheric mass loss Archives

January 15, 2024January 15, 2024 by Evan Gough

A Hot Jupiter With a Comet-Like Tail

The hot jupiter exoplanet WASP-69b orbits its star so closely that its atmosphere is being blown into space. Researchers made detailed observations of the planet, located about 160 light-years from Earth. They found that it has a comet-like tail extending about 560,000 km into space, about seven times the planet's diameter. Image Credit: Adam Makarenko/W. M. Keck Observatory

About 164 light-years away, a Hot Jupiter orbits its star so closely that it takes fewer than four days to complete an orbit. The planet is named WASP-69b, and it’s losing mass into space, stripped away by the star’s powerful energy. The planet’s lost atmosphere forms a trail that extends about 560,000 km (350,000 miles) into space.

January 12, 2024January 12, 2024 by Evan Gough

Half of this Exoplanet is Covered in Lava

Like Kepler-10 b, illustrated above, the exoplanet HD 63433 d is a small, rocky planet in a tight orbit of its star. HD 63433 d is the smallest confirmed exoplanet younger than 500 million years old. It's also the closest discovered Earth-sized planet this young, at about 400 million years old. NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Astronomers working with TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) have discovered a planet that’s been left out in the Sun too long. Or at least half of it has. The newly discovered planet is tidally locked to its star, and one side is completely molten.

November 4, 2023November 4, 2023 by Evan Gough

TESS Finds Eight More Super-Earths

Artist’s impression of a Super-Earth orbiting a Sun-like star. Super-Earths are more massive than Earth yet lighter than ice giants like Neptune and Uranus, and can be made of gas, rock or a combination of both. They are between twice the size of Earth and up to 10 times its mass. Image Credit: ESO

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered most of the confirmed exoplanets that we know of. But its successor, TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), is catching up. New research announces the validation of eight more TESS candidates, and they’re all Super-Earths.

June 16, 2020June 16, 2020 by Evan Gough

Newborn Exoplanets can be Completely Stripped of Their Atmosphere by Stars

Artist's conception of exoplanet systems that could be observed by PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO), a European Space Agency telescope. Credit: ESA - C. Carreau

Newborn exoplanets can have a tough life. They may form an atmosphere, but that atmosphere can be doomed. Their stars can emit intense X-ray and UV radiation, stripping away those atmospheres and laying their surfaces bare.

A team of researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics looked at a family of four newborn sibling planets, and tried to understand how their star strips away their gaseous envelopes.