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This is a study of an exoplanet. Apparently, a "hot Jupiter" is shorthand for a general classification of planet type. The planet at the center of the new stud
by DoreenMichele 5y ago
This is a study of an exoplanet. Apparently, a "hot Jupiter" is shorthand for a general classification of planet type.
The planet at the center of the new study, which appears today in Nature Astronomy, is WASP-121b, a massive gas giant nearly twice the size of Jupiter. The planet is an ultrahot Jupiter and was discovered in 2015 orbiting a star about 850 light years from Earth.
- tejtm 5y agoYes a large gas giant but right in close to the star. There is a bias for finding them since they orbit rapidly (like our planet Mercury) but block much more light and we do good with noticing blinky lights
- cgriswald 5y agoThe comparison to Mercury's orbit is mildly inapt. A hot Jupiter is much closer to its host star than Mercury and subsequently orbits in a matter of a handful of days rather than Mercury's ~3 months.
- dhosek 5y agoThere was a diagram of the solar system recently shared (like in the last few months) that really threw of my image of how close Mercury is to the Sun, especially relative to the Sun's size. Thanks to badly scaled diagrams, I'd always envisioned Mercury's distance to the Sun as being less than 2 solar radii (so a daytime sky would be pretty much all Sun). It's always a little surprising to realize just how much space there is in space.
- Vanit 5y agoSimilarly, to scale depictions of the distance/size of the Earth and the moon were quite surprising to me too.
- aaronblohowiak 5y agoI feel like this was an appropriate example of Wittgenstein’s ladder