© Belga – Artist illustration
The Cheops exoplanet observation satellite made it possible to reveal for the first time the deformation of a planet close to that of a rugby ball, by the effect of attraction it undergoes because of its star.
The rare bird, dubbed WASP-103b, is located in the constellation of Hercules, a very modest distance of regarding 1,800 light years from the solar system.
The team of astronomers led by Portuguese astrophysicist Susana Barros, at the University of Porto, was looking for a specimen extremely distorted by its proximity to its star, explains Jacques Laskar, co-signer of the study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics .
