While monitoring a star barely two million years old called V830 Tau, located in the Taurus stellar nursery some 430 light years away, that an international team of astronomers discovered the youngest known hot Jupiter.
Astronomers have found far more planets like this in the cluster than expected.
Astronomers searching for the galaxy’s youngest planets have found compelling evidence for one unlike any other, a newborn “hot Jupiter” whose outer layers are being torn away by the star it orbits every 11 hours.
In just two decades, we have gone from knowing one planetary system (our own) to thousands, with 3,268 exoplanets now known. Many of which have had very irregular orbits that position themselves too close to the stars.
