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Forbidden planet discovered in Neptunian Desert


When looking for new planets, astronomers look for a dip in the light of a star with the planet orbiting it and blocking the light. Astronomers say they have discovered a rogue exoplanet with its own atmosphere in the Neptunian Desert. NGTS-4b, nicknamed The Forbidden Planet is smaller than Neptune but three times the size of Earth said researchers led by the University of Warwick in the UK.

The exoplanet, described in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, has a mass of 20 Earth masses, a radius 20 percent smaller than Neptune, and a temperature of 1000 degrees Celsius. It orbits around the star in only 1.3 days, the equivalent of Earth’s orbit around the Sun for one year. It is the first exoplanet of its kind to have been found in the Neptunian Desert.

The Neptunian Desert in the region close to stars where no Neptune-sized planets are found. This area receives strong irradiation from the star, meaning the planets do not retain their gaseous atmosphere as they evaporate leaving just a rocky core. However, NGTS-4b still has its atmosphere of gas. When looking for new planets, astronomers look for a dip in the light of a star with the planet orbiting it and blocking the light. Usually, only dips of one percent and more are picked up by ground-based searches.

However, the NGTS telescopes, situated in the Atacama Desert, Chile, can pick up a dip of just 0.2 percent. Researchers believe the planet may have moved into the Neptunian Desert recently, in the last one million years, or it was very big and the atmosphere is still evaporating.

Richard West, from the University of Warwick said, this planet must be tough it is right in the zone where we expected Neptune-sized planets could not survive. It is truly remarkable that we found a transiting planet via a star dimming by less than 0.2%, this has never been done before by telescopes on the ground, and it was great to find after working on this project for a year. We are now scouring out data to see if we can see any more planets in the Neptune Desert perhaps the desert is greener than was once thought.

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