Hubble telescope discovers football-shaped exoplanet

By Gamze Turkoglu Oguz

ANKARA (AA) - The Hubble Space Telescope discovered a football-shaped exoplanet with heavy metals in its atmosphere, according to reports.

“Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal magnesium and iron gas streaming from the strange world outside our solar system known as WASP-121b,” ScienceDaily reported.

The planet, WASP-121b, has a host star which is brighter and hotter than the sun and is orbiting dangerously close to its star.

“Its upper atmosphere reaches a blazing 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,538 Celsius),” it said.

ScienceDaily said the temperature of the exoplanet’s upper atmosphere is 10 times greater than any other known planetary atmosphere.

“The WASP-121 system resides about 900 light-years from Earth” and its shape is due to closeness to its star and it is about to be ripped apart by the star’s gravity, it said.

Details of the discovery was published Aug. 1 in The Astronomical Journal.

The Hubble Telescope, developed jointly by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Space Telescope Science Institute, has been making space observations since 1990.

*Writing by Sena Guler