Artist's rendering of a "hot Jupiter"

spitzer_ssc2021-05a July 26th, 2021

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Artist's rendering of a "hot Jupiter," with samples of "light curve" data from hot Jupiters obtained by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

HIP 67522 b was identified as a planet candidate by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satllite (TESS), which detects planets via the transit method: Scientists look for small dips in the brightness of a star, indicating that an orbiting planet has passed between the observer and the star. But young stars tend to have a lot of dark splotches on their surfaces - starspots, also called sunspots when they appear on the Sun - that can look similar to transiting planets. So scientists used data from NASA's recently retired infrared observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope, to confirm that the transit signal was from a planet and not a starspot. (Other methods of exoplanet detection have yielded hints at the presence of even younger hot Jupiters, but none have been confirmed.)

Provider: Spitzer Space Telescope

Image Source: https://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/image/ssc2021-05a-artists-rendering-of-a-hot-jupiter