Astronomers Find a Huge Planet Orbiting its Star at 6,000 Times the Earth-Sun Distance

[Seldom Bucket]

Tracking exoplanets is hard – especially when that exoplanet is so far away from its parent star that the normally used “transit” method of watching it dim the light of the star itself is ineffectual. But it really helps if the planet is huge, and has its own infrared glow, no matter how far away from its star it might be. At least those properties allowed a team of scientists from the University of Hawai’i to track a particular exoplanet called (and we’re not kidding) Coconuts-2b.


We here at UT are no stranger to whimsical astronomical naming, but the Cool Companions on Ultrawide Orbits (Coconuts) survey may take the cake. This new planet that survey turned up is almost 6 times the size of Jupiter and is orbiting its star at an astonishing 6,000 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

Astronomers Find a Huge Planet Orbiting its Star at 6,000 Times the Earth-Sun Distance

Tracking exoplanets is hard – especially when that exoplanet is so far away from its parent star that the normally used “transit” method of watching it dim the light of the star itself is ineffectual. But it really helps if the planet is huge, and has its own infrared glow, no matter how far...

www.universetoday.com

 

[mikewazar]

Coconuts-2b

Nier: Automata