An international team of astronomers has discovered a new inflated « hot Jupiter » exoplanet as part of the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS). The newfound alien world, designated NGTS-21b is about 30% larger and more than two times as massive as Jupiter. The finding was detailed in a paper published October 3 on arXiv.org.
October 13, 2022
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An international team of astronomers has discovered a new inflated « hot Jupiter » exoplanet as part of the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS). The newfound alien world, designated NGTS-21b is about 30% larger and more than two times as massive as Jupiter. The finding was detailed in a paper published October 3 on arXiv.org.
The so-called « hot Jupiters » are similar in characteristics to the solar system’s biggest planet, but have orbital periods of less than 10 days. Such exoplanets have high surface temperatures, as they orbit their parent stars very closely.
Now, a group of astronomers led by Douglas R. Alves of the University of Chile in Santiago, Chile, reports the detection of a new extrasolar planet of this type. While observing a metal-poor K dwarf star known as NGTS-21 using telescopes operating from the ESO Paranal Observatory in Chile, they identified a strong transit signal. Planetary nature of this signal was confirmed by follow-up observations.
