Scientists find vast Jupiter-like exoplanet hanging 129 light years from Earth

New Delhi : Scientists have discovered a vast exoplanet which is located 129 light years from Earth. They have found a “super-Jupiter” like planet in the depth of space using a new technique for scanning the stars.

Sources confirmed that astronomers have combined the light from multiple telescopes so as to study the exoplanet. Generally, scientists have to employ indirect methods to examine exoplanets because of the blinding light of their stars. But, here in this case, the technique was a bit different. They used a technique called optical interferometry that allowed four telescopes to work as one.

The result was an imaging system sensitive enough to disentangle light from the planet and its parent star.

A scientific instrument name 'Gravity has been used to combine four light beams from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in Chile

The “super-Jupiter” has stormy atmosphere with swirling clouds of iron and silicate. 

The planet, known as HR8799e, was discovered in 2010 orbiting a star in the Pegasus constellation. It is a world unlike any found in our own solar system that is both more massive and much younger than any planet orbiting the sun.

Experts from the Paris Observatory in France and Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, said: ‘Our observations suggest a ball of gas illuminated from the interior, with rays of warm light swirling through stormy patches of dark clouds. ‘Convection moves around the clouds of silicate and iron particles, which disaggregate and rain down into the interior. ‘This paints a picture of a dynamic atmosphere of a giant exoplanet at birth, undergoing complex physical and chemical processes.”