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NEW YORK: A team of Australian astronomers has discovered an exoplanet that is orbiting a small star as many as five hundred light-years away.
The far away planet in question, dubbed HATS-6b, is revolving around HATS-6 star, which is nearly 50 per cent of our Sun in both mass and diameter. It is, thus, one of the smallest stars that astronomers have discovered.
Astronomers estimated that the distance between HATS-6b and HATS-6 is much smaller than the distance between out Sun and Mercury. It has an orbital period of merely 3.3 days.
In terms of weight, HATS-6b is equivalent to Saturn and nearly 100 times of our Earth. But its proximity to its sun made it so hot that it inflated like a hot air balloon to the size of Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system.
Researcher George Zhou, of the Australian National University’s Research School of Astrophysics & Astronomy, said the planet discovered by them was much different from the previously discovered planets.
