Our sun's eight planets are spherical. Many other suns are spherical as well.
The European Space Agency got a better look at the WASP-103b, which was shaped like a rugby ball. This gas giant is twice the size of Jupiter and less than 1.5 times its mass, discovered in the constellation of Hercules.
Astronomers measured WASP-103b and other exoplanets extensively during the "Cheops" mission, which launched in late 2019. The agency published its findings using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
"Cheops measures transit exoplanets, the dip in light caused when a planet passes in front of its star from our point of view," the official writeup for the ESA explains.
The shape of the light curve will reveal details about the planet. Astronomers have been able to detect the minute signal of the formation of WASP-103b because of the high precision of Cheops and its pointing flexibility.
The credit is given to the European Space Agency.
WASP-103b had a high potential for change, because it was close to the sun. It completes a revolution in less than one Earth day. Its tides are strong, which makes them effective in shaping WASP-103b's mass. The weird exoplanet is able to tell us more about worlds like it.
Susana Barros, lead author of the research, says that the resistance of a material depends on its composition. We can only see tides in the oceans when the moon and the sun are not in the sky. The rocky part doesn't move much. We can tell how much of the planet is rocky, gaseous, or water by measuring how much the planet is deformed.
The composition of WASP-103b is of particular interest because of two reasons. The bloated exoplanet could tell us more about gas giants.
"We would expect a planet with 1.5 times the mass of the Jupiter to be roughly the same size, so WASP-103b must be very inflated due to heating from its star and maybe other mechanisms," Barros explains. WASP-103b is 20 times hotter than Jupiter.
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The strong tides impact "orbital decay." The distance between stellar bodies is decreasing. Based on stellar physics, WASP-103b should eventually collide with and become engulfed by its host star. The WASP-103b was detected doing the opposite by the ESA.
Scientists theorize that the data may simply be wrong, and that there are a number of explanations for the baffling behavior. It's new territory and we're investigating space here. There is more data that is needed. The James Webb Space Telescope is on its way to help. As new theories and observations are made, Cheops will continue to gather data.
The study is an excellent example of the diverse questions that exoplanet scientists are able to tackle with Cheops, illustrating the importance of flexible follow-up mission.
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