Computer artwork of a “hot Jupiter” and its parent star DETLEV VAN RAVENSWAAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Astronomers may have detected a planet around a nearby star – potentially the second hottest exoplanet ever found.
Spencer Hurt at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his colleagues used 10 years of observations of Vega, a bright star just 25 light years from our solar system, to look for the telltale gravitational tug of planets.
They were able to spot a potential world that orbits the star every 2.43 Earth days, at a distance 10 times closer than Mercury orbits the sun. It has a…
