Hot Jupiters as a research area focuses on close-in, gas giant exoplanets with orbital periods of a few days and strong stellar irradiation, used as laboratories for testing planet formation, migration, and atmospheric physics. Work in this field addresses mechanisms of inward migration (e.g., disk-driven vs. high-eccentricity pathways), tidal interactions, atmospheric escape, cloud and haze formation, chemical disequilibrium, and energy transport under extreme irradiation. Researchers combine transit, eclipse, and phase-curve observations with high-resolution spectroscopy and sophisticated radiative–convective and global circulation models to constrain compositions, temperature–pressure profiles, wind patterns, and the interaction of these planets with their host stars’ radiation and magnetic environments.
Planets beyond our solar system can have magnetic fields similar to those closer to home, astronomers said Tuesday after observing extreme winds on scorching worlds known as "hot Jupiters."
Planetary Sciences
Jul 3, 2026
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53
You're the grillmaster at the annual family Fourth of July barbecue, and you're sweating bullets standing over the grill in the sweltering summer heat. You're trying to stay cool by pressing a cold beer can to your forehead, ...
Planetary Sciences
Jun 24, 2026
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10
One well-done gas giant, coming right up! That's the latest from researchers analyzing NASA's James Webb Space Telescope observations of HD 80606 b, an exoplanet four times the mass of Jupiter with an extremely elliptical ...
Astronomy
Jun 17, 2026
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20
New research led by a scientist at IPAC—a science and data center for astrophysics and planetary science at Caltech—studying the hot Jupiter CoRoT-2 b has settled on one of the three leading hypotheses explaining why its ...
Astronomy
Jun 17, 2026
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23
A debate has been raging among planetary scientists for more than a decade—why are there so few exoplanets with a radius of about 1.8 times that of Earth? Exoplanets are currently largely grouped into two distinct categories—"super-Earths" ...
Planetary Sciences
Jun 14, 2026
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39
A team of astronomers has found the strongest evidence yet that some planets outside our solar system may be magnetic. Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) and the Gemini North telescope, ...
Astronomy
Jun 2, 2026
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249
When astronomers discovered the first planet outside our solar system, it was orbiting a pulsar, one of the most extreme, radiation-blasted environments imaginable. Not exactly the kind of place you'd expect to find a planet, ...
Astrobiology
Jun 1, 2026
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25
Sand clouds form every morning but clear up by nightfall on WASP-94A b, a well-studied gas giant in a constellation located nearly 700 light years away from Earth. Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), research ...
Astronomy
May 21, 2026
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31
A planet that is about the size of Saturn, but with a temperature more like Earth's, has an atmosphere rich in methane, according to a new study using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Astronomy
May 21, 2026
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118
One night last fall, University of Cincinnati astrophysics graduate Paul Smith waited anxiously for data to start rolling across his computer screen from the James Webb Space Telescope a million miles from Earth.
Astronomy
May 9, 2026
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