A “MONSTER” planet that should be too big for its star is forcing astronomers to rethink their theories.
The Jupiter-sized world, NGTS-1b, is the biggest planet compared with the size of its parent star ever discovered. It orbits a small red dwarf star half the size of the sun 600 light years away.
Dr Daniel Bayliss, from the University of Warwick, who led the team of astronomers, said: “Such massive planets were not thought to exist around such small stars.
“We are already challenging the received wisdom of how planets form. Our challenge is to now find out how common these types of planets are in the galaxy.”
NGTS-1b was spotted using the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS), a robotic array of telescopes in Chile’s Atacama Desert designed to search for exoplanets passing in front of their parent stars.
The “hot Jupiter” gas giant is very close to its star, just 3 per cent of the distance between the Earth and the sun, and makes one orbit every 2.6 days. It has a surface temperature of around 530C.
Professor Peter Wheatley, also from the University of Warwick, who heads the NGTS, said: “NGTS-1b was difficult to find, despite being a monster of a planet, because its parent star is small and faint. Small stars are actually the most common in the universe, so it is possible that there are many of these giant planets waiting to found.
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