Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.
An illustration shows the atmosphere of the Jupiter-sized exoplanet V1298 Tau b being stripped away transforming it into a super-Earth sized worldUsing the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have discovered that a cotton-candy-like Jupiter-sized planet located around 350 light-years away is shrinking and could be on the way to becoming a"sub-Neptune" or"super-Earth" sized world.
V1298 Tau b is just around 16 million miles from its highly active, hot young T Tauri parent star, meaning that it completes an orbit in just 24 Earth days. As a result of this proximity, the planet is also being bombarded with high doses of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation from its star, which is stripping its atmosphere.
As a result, V1298 Tau b tells astronomers that when Neptunes and sub-Neptunes first born in a cloud of gas and dust surrounding a young star called a"," they are in a state that doesn't resemble how they appear at mature ages. The research also suggests Neptune and sub-Neptune-class planets may"They are born with significantly large primordial envelopes, likely to have been accreted while they were forming within a proto-planetary disk," Barat said.
Barat said that the current observations only observed water vapor in the atmosphere of V1298 Tau b. This means in the future, they intend to measure the abundance of other molecules, such as"It is important to precisely constrain these abundances as it ties directly to the location of formation for this planet," Barat added.
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