[Amazing] 25 Fascinating Exoplanets To Blow Your Scientific Mind
How would you like to live on another planet? Granted it’s not possible right now but scientists have been able to find other planets that could (maybe, possibly) be suitable for life. Sadly these exoplanets are not in our solar system.
An exoplanet is any planet that orbits a star other than our sun and come in all sizes; from bigger than Jupiter to smaller than Earth. Just as in our solar system, exoplanets can orbit their own stars from any distance. In fact, some exoplanets orbit so close to their stars that their surface temperatures can reach temperatures upwards of 2,200 °C (you definitely don’t want to live there). However, some exoplanets will orbit at just the right distance (known as the “habitable zone”) and are the right temperature to have liquid water on their surface which means they might be able to support life. These are but a couple of the many fascinating exoplanets found out there.
The problem, however, is that exoplanets are hard to see directly from Earth and for that reason we don’t know much about them. Because of the distance, or because many of them happen to be really small and faint, they are easily lost in the glare of the bright stars they orbit, so we often use indirect methods to find them. One of these is called the transit method, by which we carefully measure the brightness of a star over a long period of time and look for periodic decreases in the brightness that are caused by a planet passing in front of it. Using these method we have been able to find so many peculiar planets! So if you are ready to learn about some of the most peculiar planets in our universe, get ready because these are 25 Fascinating Exoplanets To Blow Your Scientific Mind.
Gliese 3634 b
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Gliese 3634 b is a super-Earth in the orbit of the nearby red dwarf Gliese 3634 approximately 64.5 light-years away, in the constellation Hydra. The planet is approximately eight times the mass of Earth and orbits its star every two and a half days at a distance of 0.0287 AU. The planet was the first to be discovered by a group of astronomers searching for exoplanets in the orbit of very-low-mass stars.
51 Pegasi (Helvetios)
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51 Pegasi, or Helvetios, is a sunlike star located 50.9 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. It was the first main-sequence star found to have an exoplanet orbiting it. The star is of apparent magnitude 5.49, and so is visible with the naked eye under suitable viewing conditions.
Gliese 436 b
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Gliese 436 b is a Neptune-sized exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf Gliese 436. It was the first hot Neptune (a type of giant planet with a mass similar to that of Uranus or Neptune in an orbit close to its star) discovered with certainty (in 2007) and is among the smallest known transiting planets in mass and radius. The planet has the second-lowest insolation of the known transiting planets. Whatever energy tidal effects deliver to the planet, it does not significantly affect its temperature, because of the planet’s gravity.
HD 164595 b
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HD 164595 b is a confirmed exoplanet orbiting the sun-like star HD 164595 every forty days some 94.36 light-years away. Depending on the planet’s density it could be a mega-world that could be like a terrestrial planet or it could be made out of volatile compressed into a solid form.
Kepler-442b
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Kepler-442b is a confirmed near-Earth-sized exoplanet, likely rocky, orbiting within the habitable zone of a K-type star. The planet was discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft using the transit method and was announced on January 6, 2015. The planet is described as being one of the most Earth-like planets, in terms of size and temperature, yet found.
Epsilon Eridani b (Aegir)
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Epsilon Eridani b, or Aegir, is a confirmed extrasolar planet approximately ten light-years away from Earth and observations have indicated that the planet has a mass 1.5 times that of Jupiter. It shares the same plane as the outer dust disk observed around its star. According to astrometric measurements, it is the closest planet to Earth.
TrES-2b
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This planet is located 750 light-years from our solar system and was identified in 2011 as the darkest known exoplanet, reflecting less than one percent of any light that hits it. It is not clear yet why the planet is so dark.
PSR J1719-1438
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PSR J1719-1438 is a millisecond pulsar with a spin period of 5.8 milliseconds and was discovered in 2011 by the High Time Resolution Survey, a radio astronomy search for objects that rapidly vary in radio brightness, such as pulsars. Because the companion to PSR J1719-1438 is planet-sized, made primarily of carbon, and very dense, it may be similar to a large diamond. In the science press, the object has been called the “Diamond Planet.”
COROT-3b
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COROT-3b is a brown dwarf or massive extrasolar planet with a mass 21.66 times that of Jupiter. The object orbits an F-type star in the constellation Aquila and its orbit is circular and takes 4.2568 days to complete.
Gliese 581 d
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Gliese 581 d is a possible extrasolar planet orbiting Gliese 581 approximately 20.4 light-years away in the constellation Libra. This super-Earth is the first exoplanet of terrestrial mass proposed to orbit within the habitable zone of its parent star and assuming its existence, computer climate simulations have confirmed the possibility of surface water, and these factors combined suggest a relatively high measure of planetary habitability.
WASP-18b
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WASP-18b is an extrasolar planet that is notable for having an orbital period of less than one day. Its late discovery is a challenge for the scientists who are trying to understand whether the discovery of this planet so shortly before its expected demise was fortuitous, or whether tidal dissipation by WASP-18 is actually much less efficient than astrophysicists typically assume.
Are you captivated by exoplanets and other space facts? Then check out these 25 Crazy Facts About Our Solar System.
HD 189733 b
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HD 189733 b is an extrasolar planet approximately sixty-three light-years away from here in the constellation Vulpecula, the Fox. The planet was discovered orbiting the star HD 189733 A on October 5, 2005. This planet is also the first extrasolar planet confirmed to have carbon dioxide in its atmosphere.
Gliese 1214 b (GJ 1214 b)
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Gliese 1214 b, alson known as GJ 1214 b, is an exoplanet that orbits the star Gliese 1214 and was discovered in December 2009. As of 2015, GJ 1214 b is the most likely known candidate for being an ocean planet. For that reason, scientists have nicknamed this planet ”the water world.” Some of the solid-phase water could be in the form of ice VII.
SWEEPS-10
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This planet orbits the star SWEEPS J175902.00−291323.7 located in the Galactic bulge at a distance of approximately 22,000 light-years from Earth. The strange thing about this planet is that it completes an orbit in just ten hours, which makes it the fastest planet ever known. Additionally, because of its high temperature, estimated at approximately 1,650° Celsius, it is also one of the hottest ever detected.
XO-3b
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XO-3b is an exoplanet that is about 11.79 times the mass of Jupiter, and orbits its parent star in about 3.2 days. It’s also called an “oddball” planet because it is the only planet that stands out from over 350 other extrasolar planets as the most massive planet found in close proximity to a star. Another of its characteristics is that its orbit is significantly elliptical rather than circular.
HAT-P-11b
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Discovered on January 2, 2009, HAT-P-11b is the first Neptune-sized exoplanet known to have a relatively cloud-free atmosphere. It’s also the first time molecules, namely water vapor, of any kind have been found on such a relatively small exoplanet. Its radial velocity is drifting and this may be a result of an as-yet-undiscovered planet in the system.
HAT-P-1 and ADS 16402 B
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HAT-P-1, along with ADS 16402 B, is a binary star system located 450 light-years away in the constellation Lacerta. It was identified for the first time in 1831. The star system is estimated to be 3.6 billion years old and also the puffiest one we’ve encountered.
Super-Earth
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Super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth’s, but substantially lower than the mass of both Uranus and Neptune, which are fifteen and seventeen Earth masses, respectively. According to scientific theories, these kind of super-Earths of about two Earth masses may in fact be more conducive to life than our own planet.
OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb
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OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb is a “super-Earth” extrasolar planet orbiting the star OGLE-2005-BLG-390L, which is situated 21,500 ± 3,300 light-years from Earth, near the center of the Milky Way. It was discovered on January 25, 2006. It does not appear to meet conditions presumed necessary to support life, as it is possibly the coldest planet that exists.
HD 188753
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HD 188753 is an hierarchical triple-star system approximately 151 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. The strange thing about this planet is that it has three suns.
COROT-7b
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COROT-7b is an exoplanet that orbits the star COROT-7, in the constellation Monoceros, 489 light-years from Earth. It takes its name from the French-led COROT mission that discovered it. Until the announcement of Kepler-10b in January 2011, it was the smallest exoplanet to have its diameter measured, at 1.58 times that of Earth, and the first potential extrasolar terrestrial planet to be found. The planet is also notable for being a rocky world and not a gas giant, full of rock showers and raging volcanoes.
WASP-12b
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WASP-12b is an extrasolar planet orbiting the star WASP-12, discovered by the SuperWASP planetary transit survey. Its discovery was announced on April 1, 2008. Its uniqueness is that it has one of the lowest densities for an exoplanet, which means that the planet takes only a little over a day to orbit the star, in contrast to 365 days for Earth to orbit the sun. The unique warmth of the planet reaches to more than 2,500 K (2,200 °C) on the surface.
KOI-314 (Kepler-138)
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Kepler-138, also known as KOI-314, is a red dwarf located in the constellation Lyra, two hundred light-years from Earth. What’s really weird about this planet is that despite being about sixty percent larger in diameter than Earth, it has the same weight as our planet, which means it probably has a very thick, gaseous atmosphere. It’s considered to be one of the lightest planets ever noticed.
Kepler-10b
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Kepler-10b is the first confirmed terrestrial planet to have been discovered outside our solar system. The planet’s discovery was announced on January 10, 2011, and is considered the smallest known exoplanet we have found at this point.
Kepler-10c
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Kepler-10c is an exoplanet orbiting the G-type star Kepler-10, located around 568 light-years away in Draco. Its discovery was announced by Kepler (space observatory launched by NASA) in May 2011. It’s considered one of the weirdest exoplanets we have discovered so far, because even though it’s only 2.3 times the size of Earth, it is an astonishing seventeen times heavier.
