Astronomers discover 'puffed up' planet orbiting small star
Some 500 light years away from Earth, a "puffed up" planet is orbiting around a star — HATS-6 — that has researchers at the Australian National University thoroughly intrigued.
"(The planet) must have formed further out and migrated in, but our theories can't explain how this happened," astronomer George Zhou told CNN. "The planet has a similar mass to Saturn, but its radius is similar to Jupiter, so it's quite a puffed up planet."
The discovery — outlined in a study published in The Astronomical Journal — came about after researchers noticed that HATS-6's light dimmed periodically, suggesting something was moving between the star and Earth. Now that astronomers have confirmed the existence of the planet, they still want to answer questions about how such a large planet managed to form from such a small star. Astronomers have theorized that planets form from leftover gas and dust existing in a disc around stars, but HATS-6 is so small it would have had very little leftover material.
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