Tuesday, 13 June 2017

Some of space's weirdest exoplanets #13

KELT-9b is a Jupiter-like gas giant orbiting its super hot parent star, KELT-9, 650 light-years away. It orbits from such a short distance that it completes one orbit once every one and a half days and only one side faces its star. The surface temperature on KELT - 9b's day side can reach up to a blazing in 4300 degrees Celsius! That is hotter than most surfaces of dwarf stars! Such heat makes it a very special planet. Water and carbon dioxide molecules likely cannot exist because of the extreme temperatures.
Its star isn't helping matters, because it is bigger and hotter than our sun. The abundance of ultraviolet radiation is destroying this planet's atmosphere, causing it to expand, making it 2.8 times massive than Jupiter but only half as dense.

The planet is receiving so much radiation that bits of its surface are being blasted away and forming a comet-like tail behind the doomed planet. Eventually, it will be completely gone if it is a gas giant or if it has a rocky core, then its atmosphere would be completely stripped away. 

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