As astronomers search for planets beyond our solar system, they have discovered a giant exoplanet that resembles a football or rugby ball. The planet is called WASP-103b and it is very unique. It is located roughly 1,225 light-years away from Earth in the Hercules constellation. When looking at its size, the planet is almost twice the size of Jupiter.
The unique star is also 50 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun, so it is under extreme gravity. For WASP-103b, to complete a full orbit around its star it takes just under one Earth day. Astronomers categorized this gas giant as a “hot Jupiter” planet due to its scale and short orbit.
This planet was first identified in 2014 and has been watched using the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. Researchers wanted to view the planet from different perspectives using CHEOPS, which is a joint mission of Switzerland and the European Space Agency. The CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite was launched in 2019 and it searches for potentially habitable planets.
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