An eccentric planet in scientific terms doesn’t quite mean the same thing one would expect in most other topics of discussion. When talking about space objects that move around their parent star, an eccentric planet refers to a perfectly circular orbit. In that case, we say that the eccentricity of said planet is zero while higher values will describe a more elliptical orbit.
In our solar system, the best example of an eccentric planet would be Pluto: not only does the orbit rest at an approximate 17-degree angle from what is usually considered horizontal, but its orbit – which takes 248 Earth years to complete – comes as close as 29 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, and 49 AU when furthest away, scoring the highest planet orbit deviation in our solar system.
Because of the unnatural way in which they orbit their parent stars as well as their effects on the objects that they move around, scientists have long manifested a huge interest in them. As a result, they are constantly scouting out the nearest solar systems from the Milky Way for such planets using a variety of observers and telescopes – airborne or on land.
Their quest for locating these peculiar objects in space has recently elicited results as researchers may have just found one of the ‘most eccentric’ planets we have ever witnessed. And it’s not even that far away from friendly land: 117 light years away from planet Earth. On a cosmic level, that is pretty much next door. The exoplanet, named HD 20782, scores an orbital eccentricity of 0.96 and it comes at its closest point in its orbit only once every 597 Earth days.
Even though the planet comes close in mass to Jupiter, its movements around the binary star system make it resemble a comet more than it does a planet as it slows down when it comes close to the parent star – at a staggering distance of 0.06 AU, or 9 million kilometers – then slingshots away into what appears to be an almost flat orbit.
But that is not the only feature of interest regarding HD 20782. On top of the peculiar system that it resides in, scientists have also managed to get a glimpse of the planet’s atmospheric composition when it reflected the star’s light. Researchers speculate that the flash was a result of its atmosphere being suddenly heated by stellar wind when it came at the lowest of its orbit. The findings have been officially published in the online Astrophysical Journal on February 28th.
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