Newly discovered exoplanet is 'hotter than most stars'
KELT-9b is a giant planet nearly twice the size of Jupiter, with a dayside temperature hotter than that of most stars and thousands of degrees warmer than any known exoplanet, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature.
This makes it the hottest host star of an exoplanet that we know of, said Scott Gaudi, study author and professor of astronomy at the Ohio State University.
If the planet is evaporating at a high rate, all that may be left after the star cools is a rocky core, which the researchers believe to be at the heart of all giant planets.
Because KELT-9 is so bright, Gaudi is confident that observations from space telescopes like Hubble, Spitzer, TESS and, eventually, the James Webb Space Telescope could reveal more about this strange system.
Jointly operated by Ohio State, Vanderbilt and Lehigh universities, they are placed in the north and south hemispheres and designed to look at millions of bright stars at once.
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