Post by University of Oxford, Department of Physics

An international collaboration led by Dr George Dransfield at the University of Oxford has discovered two exceptionally rare "super-puff" planets orbiting the star TOI-791. Though these planets are roughly the size of Jupiter, their densities are remarkably lower than candy floss. To calculate these measurements, researchers combined space-based data from NASA's TESS with ground observations from Antarctica, where months of continuous winter darkness allowed teams to capture the longest uninterrupted planetary transits ever recorded from Earth. This unique system provides astronomers with an ideal laboratory to study how planetary atmospheres form and evolve. Future research will utilize the James Webb Space Telescope to analyse the chemical makeup of these unusual worlds. Read the article in full via https://lnkd.in/e4dSNawc