TESS Spots Puffiest Exoplanets Ever Found
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Two newly discovered exoplanets, TOI-791b and TOI-791c, are as large as Jupiter but have densities lower than cotton candy, giving astronomers a rare glimpse into how bloated gas giants form and evolve.
This illustration depicts TOI-791b and TOI-791c planets and their parent star. Image credit: NASA / Daniel Rutter. TOI-791b is nearly the same size as Jupiter but contains just 3% of Jupiter’s mass, while TOI-791c is even larger than Jupiter yet holds only 5.9% of its mass.
They orbit TOI-791, a Sun-like star located approximately 1,113 light years away in the constellation of Volans. “The main reason these planets are interesting to study is that we didn’t expect to see them at all,” said Dr. Jon Jenkins, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
“They represent a puzzle for us to solve about how giant planets like Jupiter and the super-puffs form.” NASA’s TESS mission detected these exoplanets by watching for repeated dips in the brightness of the star — a sign that a planet is transiting, or crossing in front of, its star. Because they have unusually long orbital periods (139 days for TOI-791b and 232 days for TOI-791c), TESS needed to accumulate 1,122 days of observations over seven years to capture and confirm their properties. “This system offers a unique laboratory for understanding how super-puff planets form and evolve,” said University of Birmingham’s Professor Amaury Triaud.
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