Heißer Jupiterplanet mit Schweif wie ein kolossaler Komet entdeckt | Astronomen haben einen Exoplaneten mit einem Schweif entdeckt, der einem riesigen Kometen ähnelt. Der als WASP-69b bekannte Planet verdampft langsam in der Strahlung seines Muttersterns.

From the article: WASP-69b is a gas giant that orbits very close to its host star, meaning it’s a kind of planet often called a Hot Jupiter. That alone isn’t too exciting – those are some of the most commonly found exoplanets out there, because their size and proximity to stars makes them easy to detect.

But what’s weird about WASP-69b is its long luxurious tail, which would give it the appearance of a gigantic comet. The intense radiation from the star – the stellar wind – is not only boiling off the planet’s atmosphere, but also sweeping it into a long stream like a comet’s tail.

In a [new study](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad11d0), astronomers used the KECK Observatory in Hawaii to examine WASP-69 b in more detail, revealing the full extent of its tail. They found that it stretches some 580,000 km (360,000 miles), which is roughly one and a half times the distance from Earth to the Moon.

“Work by previous groups showed that this planet was losing some of its atmosphere and suggested a subtle tail or perhaps none at all,” said Dakotah Tyler, first author of the study. “However, we have now definitively detected this tail and shown it to be at least seven times longer than the planet itself.”