big as Jupiter and light as cotton candy.

Astronomers have discovered a planet much larger than Jupiter orbiting a distant star. The strangest thing is that it has the density of cotton candy. This is a “furry giant”.

The Mystery of WASP-193b. WASP-193b, located approximately 1,200 light-years from Earth, is the second least dense exoplanet known after Kepler 51d. However, it is four times larger and is a rare bird among the more than 5,000 planets discovered outside the solar system.

WASP-193b is 50% larger than Jupiter, our largest neighbor, but has one-tenth its mass. Its density is 0.059 grams per cubic centimeter, which corresponds to the density of cotton candy at 0.05 grams per cubic centimeter.

International find. The discovery, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, was made possible by an international collaboration called WASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets), which has robotic observatories to measure the brightness of stars in both hemispheres.

The study is based on four years of observations of a planet passing in front of a Sun-like star. To calculate the planet’s mass, as well as its density, the team measured the star’s radial velocity: small fluctuations in its motion caused by the star’s motion. the gravity of the planet orbiting around it.

They thought they were wrong. WASP-193b’s monumental size should correspond to a significant shift in the star’s spectrum, but it exerts virtually no gravitational pull on it. The measurements yielded such a low density that scientists considered it an analysis error.

“At first, the densities we obtained were so extraordinarily low that we found it difficult to believe them,” says Francisco J. Pozuelos, co-leader of the study from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia. “So we repeated the entire data analysis process several times, using different codes and methodologies, to ensure that this was the true density of the planet.”

Work for the Webb telescope. WASP-193b may have a hydrogen-helium atmosphere several tens of thousands of kilometers larger than Jupiter’s. But no model of planet formation can explain the existence of a planet with an atmosphere with such characteristics.

The discovery requires pointing the James Webb Space Telescope at WASP-193b to learn more about its atmosphere and shed light on the nature of these giant “sponge” planets to understand how they form.

In Hatak | The California Institute of Technology has published the “strongest evidence yet” of the existence of an unknown planet in the solar system.