New planet that is as light as a styrofoam

Researchers have discovered a new giant planet orbiting an extremely bright star 320 light years from Earth that has the density of styrofoam. The planet may hold opportunities for testing atmospheres that will be useful when assessing future planets for signs of life, researchers said.

"It is highly inflated, so that while it is only a fifth as massive as Jupiter, it is nearly 40 per cent larger, making it about as dense as styrofoam, with an extraordinarily large atmosphere," said Joshua Pepper, assistant professor at Lehigh University in the US.

Styrofoam is a kind of expanded polystyrene used especially for making food containers." The planet's host star is extremely bright, allowing precise measurement of the planet's atmosphere properties and making it an excellent test-bed for measuring the atmospheres of other planets," Pepper said.

The planet, called KELT11b, is orbiting very close to its host star in an orbit that lasts less than five days. The star, KELT-11, has started using up its nuclear fuel and is evolving into a red giant, so the planet will be engulfed by its star and not survive the next hundred million years.

The star, KELT-11, is the brightest in the southern hemisphere known to host a transiting planet by more than a magnitude and the sixth brightest transit host discovered to date. –PTI