ESA’s exoplanet observer reveals strange ‘ultra-hot Jupiter’

London, Oct 5 : European Space Agency’s new exoplanet mission called Cheops has found one of the hottest and most extreme extra-solar planets ever discovered.
This so-called “ultra-hot Jupiter” named WASP-189 b sits around 20 times closer to its star than Earth does to the Sun, and completes a full orbit in just 2.7 days, according to a paper accepted for publication by the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Hot Jupiters, as the name suggests, are giant gas planets a bit like Jupiter in our own Solar System; however, they orbit far, far closer to their host star, and so are heated to extreme temperatures.
The researchers determined that the planet is extremely hot, at about 3,200 degrees Celsius.
At such temperatures, even metals such as iron melt and turn to gas, making the planet a clearly uninhabitable one.
“Only a handful of planets are known to exist around stars this hot, and this system is by far the brightest,” said lead author of the new study Monika Lendl of the University of Geneva, Switzerland.