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.
Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered a new "hot Jupiter" exoplanet. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-7169 b, orbits a metal-poor star, which ...
Astronomers have discovered that a giant planet, WASP-189b, echoes the composition of its host star, providing the first direct evidence of a foundational concept in astrobiology. This discovery was achieved through the first-ever ...
Astrobiology
Apr 1, 2026
0
99
We're starting to see just how exceptional our own solar system and its history is, as more exoplanets are discovered. A fourth exoplanet discovery in the LHS 1903 system made by ESA's CHEOPS mission places a rocky world ...
Astronomy
Mar 15, 2026
0
86
Scientists might have just found Earth's icy, distant cousin a few hundred light-years away. HD 137010 b is one of thousands of exoplanets, or planets that orbit other stars, and is potentially the first Earth-like one that ...
Astrobiology
Feb 28, 2026
1
47
The atmospheres of exoplanets have been a focal point of the field lately, with the James Webb Space Telescope taking a look at as many as it can manage. But time on the world's most powerful space telescope is valuable, ...
Planetary Sciences
Feb 15, 2026
0
60
The first exoplanet ever discovered in 1995 was what we now call a "hot Jupiter," a planet as massive as Jupiter with an orbital period of just a few days. Today, hot Jupiters are thought to have formed far from their stars—similar ...
Astronomy
Dec 15, 2025
1
33
For the first time, scientists have continuously monitored a planet's escaping atmosphere over a complete orbit, revealing that the gas giant WASP-121 b is surrounded by not one but two massive helium tails stretching more ...
Astronomy
Dec 8, 2025
1
55
Aging stars may be destroying the giant planets orbiting closest to them, according to a new study by astronomers at UCL and the University of Warwick.
Planetary Sciences
Nov 5, 2025
0
52
Why is it important to know about exoplanets having their atmospheres stripped while orbiting F-type stars? This is what a recent study submitted to The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as an international team of scientists ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 30, 2025
0
22
Astronomers have generated the first three-dimensional map of a planet orbiting another star, revealing an atmosphere with distinct temperature zones—one so scorching that it breaks down water vapor, a team co-led by a Cornell ...
Astronomy
Oct 28, 2025
0
168
