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WASP-12b is one of the more interesting exoplanets we know of. Orbiting a yellow dwarf star a little bigger than the Sun 1,410 light-years away, the ultra-black planet is what's known as a "hot Jupiter" - a gas giant exoplanet with similar mass and size to Jupiter, but so close to the star that it's scorching hot. WASP-12b has never exactly been in the most secure position. With an orbital period of just over a day, the gas giant exoplanet is so close to its star that a constant stream of material is being siphoned away from its atmosphere. But...

1. The Earthiest Kepler-78b is most similar to Earth in mass, diameter and composition; it could be made of rock with an iron core. But it’s no Earth analog, whizzing around its star in 8.5 hours, with temperatures exceeding 2,000° Celsius (SN Online: 10/30/13). 2. The wettest HR 8799c’s atmosphere lacks methane, which could signal life, but does have water and carbon monoxide (SN: 4/6/13, p. 5). Water has also been found in the atmospheres of WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b. 3. The rogue Planetary candidate PSO J318.5-22 has no parent star. The object is roughly six times the...

Astronomers have discovered that a huge, searing-hot planet orbiting another star is loaded with an unusual amount of carbon. The planet, a gas giant named WASP-12b, is the first carbon-rich world ever observed. The discovery was made using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, along with previously published ground-based observations. "This planet reveals the astounding diversity of worlds out there," said Nikku Madhusudhan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, lead author of a report in the Dec. 9 issue of the journal Nature. "Carbon-rich planets would be exotic in every way -- formation, interiors and atmospheres." It's possible that WASP-12b might...

The hottest known planet in our galaxy is being stretched into the shape of a football and rapidly consumed by its parent star, new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show. The extrasolar planet on the cosmic menu, called WASP-12b, may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured, Hubble scientists announced Thursday. WASP-12b is so close to its sun-like star that it is superheated to nearly 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit and stretched into an elongated shape by enormous tidal forces.

...the exoplanet tally stands at 334 -- with more than 60 of those found this past year alone... WASP-12b... has 1.4 times the mass of Jupiter... orbits so close to the host star (0.023 astronomical unit, or about 2 million miles) that it takes just 26 hours to complete one revolution... has a diameter 1.79 times that of Jupiter. Run the numbers, and you'll deduce that WASP-12b has a mean density of just 0.3 g/cm3... The 12th-magnitude host star, situated some 670 light-years away in southeastern Auriga, is a luminous F dwarf that scalds WASP-12b with light 6,600 times more...