Astronomers have discovered a unique lemon-shaped planet in a star system using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Astronomers have discovered a unique lemon-shaped planet in an unusual star system using NASA’s state-of-the-art James Webb Space Telescope. According to scientists, this planet could blur the distinction between stars and planets due to its structure and properties.
The discovery, presented in the study published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was named PSR J2322-2650b by scientists at the University of Chicago. The planet orbits at a distance of one million miles from its host planet (about 100 times less than the distance between the Earth and the sun) and its year is 7.8 hours long.
The lemon-shaped planet's central star is a pulsar (a rapidly rotating neutron star whose intense gravity has caused the planet to become elliptical).
Not only that, but this strange planet has a heavy atmosphere of helium and carbon and very strong winds.
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