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.
A strange planet discovered with NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has astronomers confused. Despite getting relentlessly bombarded with radiation from its red giant parent star, the world has, against all odds, hung on to its atmosphere. It is also smaller, older and hotter than scientists thought possible for such a planet.," should be a bare husk of rock due to its proximity to the star TIC 365102760, located around 1,800 light-years away from Earth.
Phoenix orbits this star at a distance of about 5.6 million miles away, or around 0.06 times the distance between us and the. That means the peculiar exoplanet has a year that lasts just 4.2 Earth days. Plus, with a width around 6.2 times that of Earth and a mass about 20 times that of our planet, Phoenix also has an unexpectedly low density. It's around 60 times less dense than the densest hot Neptune exoplanet discovered thus far.
"It's the smallest planet we've ever found around one of these red giants and probably the lowest mass planet orbiting a giant star we've ever seen," Grunblatt said."That's why it looks really weird. We don't know why it still has an atmosphere when other 'hot Neptunes' that are much smaller and much denser seem to be losing their atmospheres in much less extreme environments.
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