That Hosts a Giant Planet DiscoveredPulsating Star
That Hosts a Giant Planet DiscoveredPulsating Star
A group of researchers from the Institute of Space Sciences (IEEC-CSIC) at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has discovered, for the first time, a delta Scuti pulsating star that hosts a hot giant transiting planet.
The study - published recently in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics - was carried out by the PhD student, Enrique Herrero, the researcher Dr. Juan Carlos Morales, the exoplanet expert, Dr. Ignasi Ribas, and the amateur astronomer, Mr. Ramón Naves.
WASP-33 (also known as HD15082) is hotter, more massive than the Sun (1.5 Msun) and is located at a distance of 378 light years away, in the constellation of Andromeda. It has the peculiarity of being a star that pulsates radially, like a balloon that inflates and deflates continuously, and non-radially, like the tides in Earth’s oceans caused by the presence of the moon, which deforms the bodies of water between the poles and the equator.
This star hosts a giant planet, WASP-33b, that was detected in 2006 through the transiting method. The planet’s mass is four times the mass of Jupiter and it orbits the star at such a high speed that it only takes 1.2 days to complete its orbit.