Now, for the first time, astronomers have actually detected the warped shape of one of these hot Jupiters. Unlike ordinary, spherical planets we're all used to, this one is pulled out of shape into what looksThis achievement, courtesy of the CHEOPS space telescope, could help us to understand how these exoplanets come to exist in such extreme orbits.
. As the name suggests, these exoplanets are gas giants like Jupiter; unlike Jupiter, however, they orbit very closely to their host stars, with orbital periods of less than 10 days. This is what makes them hot.. A gas giant can't form that close to their star, because the gravity, radiation, and intense stellar winds ought to keep the gas from clumping together., over 300 could be hot Jupiters.
Although it's relatively large, we can't measure WASP-103b directly. Light from its home star vastly outshines it. However, we can measure its transits. This is when the exoplanet passes between us and the star, causing minute changes in the starlight; a faint dip when the exoplanet passes in front of the star, and a much fainter one when it passes behind, called a light curve.The European Space Agency's CHEOPS is designed to detect these light curves, with high precision.
"If we can confirm the details of its internal structure with future observations maybe we could better understand what makes it so inflated. Knowing the size of the core of this exoplanet will also be important to better understand how it formed,"of the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences and University of Porto in Portugal.
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