A video showing the extreme orbit of TIC 241249530b. As the planet makes its closest approach to the star, it becomes brighter due to the increase in incident stellar radiation. Video credit: Abigail Minnich, Penn State University
Today, the HPF Science Team, alongside the Science Team for HPF’s sister spectrograph NEID, announced the discovery of the exoplanet TIC 241249530b, a giant exoplanet with some truly remarkable properties. The planet follows an oblong, highly eccentric orbit around its star; if we compare it to objects in the Solar System, its orbit more closely resembles that of a comet than those of our planets. Furthermore, its orbit is almost exactly backwards from what we would expect based on theories of planet formation. Beyond being an interesting oddity in itself, TIC 241249530b offers a unique glimpse into the process of planetary orbital evolution, helping to explain the existence of “hot Jupiter” exoplanets.
An in-depth discussion of this discovery can be found on the NEID Science Blog, and we encourage you to check it out there! For all of the technical details, see the research manuscript published today in Nature, led by HPF Science Team member Arvind Gupta.
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