An international research team led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has discovered a large planet located in a Molecular Cloud that is part of an extension of the Taurus Constellation about 430 light-years from Earth and close to our solar system. According to astronomers who relied on data collected by NASA’s Tess Transiting Exoplanet Survey space telescope, the planet christened Iras 04125+2902 b, is to be called a newborn despite being three million years old. The results of the discovery were published in the journal Nature.
In more detail, the researchers were able to find that the young planet has a mass one-third that of the gas giant Jupiter, while having the same diameter. This finding would confirm that Iras has a relatively low density and, probably, an atmosphere in which gases are present. However, as noted in the study, astronomers point out that it is most likely not a gas giant like Jupiter. Moreover, considering that it has not yet completed its formation, its atmosphere will thin out over time. Analyses on the data collected by the telescope, lead experts to think that over time this may become similar to Neptune but gaseous, or even a rocky planet similar to Earth, albeit larger in size.
Enric Pallé, a researcher at the Canary Islands Astrophysical Institute, points out that “this planet can help us understand the early stages of the evolution of planetary atmospheres because it is during the early years of formation that an important part of these atmospheres may be lost to space due to interaction with the host star.”
