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WASP-12b

Signature of a Carbon-Rich Planet · NASA · NASA — public domain

EntityQ192834· pop 31· linked from 250 articles

Also known as TOI-1725.01, TIC 86396382b

WASP-12b is a hot Jupiter (a class of extrasolar planets) orbiting the star WASP-12, discovered in April of 2008, by the SuperWASP planetary transit survey. The planet takes only a little over one Earth day to orbit its star, in contrast to about 365.25 days for the Earth to orbit the Sun. Its distance from the star (approximately ) is only \textstyle\frac{1}{43} the Earth's distance from the Sun, with an eccentricity the same as Jupiter's. Consequently, it has one of the lowest densities for exoplanets ("inflated" by the flux of energy from the star). On December 3, 2013, scientists working w

Astronomical data · SIMBAD

Object type
Pl
Distance
1,347 light-years
Coordinates
RA 97.6367° · Dec 29.6723°
View on SIMBAD →

via SIMBAD · CDS Strasbourg

Key facts

Planet.name
WASP-12b
Planet.image
Exoplanet Comparison WASP-12 b.png
Planet.caption
Size comparison of WASP-12b (right) with Jupiter
Planet.discoverer
Cameron et al. (SuperWASP)
Planet.discovery_site
SAAO
Planet.discovered
April 2008
Planet.discovery_method
Transit
Planet.apsis
astron
Planet.eccentricity
0.049 ± 0.015
Planet.star
WASP-12
Planet.surface_grav
g
Planet.single_temperature
(, )

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Instance of
hot Jupiter
Constellation
Auriga
Parent body
WASP-12
Radius
1.9
Mass
1.47
Orbital period
1.091419179
Image
WASP-12b (NASA).jpg
Show 17 more facts
time of discovery or invention
2009-03-00
Commons category
WASP-12 b
spectral class
G0
catalog code
TIC 86396382b
discovery method
transit method
epoch
J2000.0
M sin i
1.46
orbital eccentricity
0.05
orbital inclination
83.37
semi-major axis of an orbit
0.02344
declination component of proper motion
-6.761
parallax
2.4213
right ascension component of proper motion
-1.519
argument of periapsis
-74
right ascension
97.63665253847999
declination
29.67229541735001
albedo
0.086

via Wikidata · CC0

~7 min read

Encyclopedic overview

7 sections
Contents
  • Characteristics
  • Orbit
  • Carbon content
  • Candidate satellite
  • See also
  • References
  • External links

WASP-12b is a hot Jupiter (a class of extrasolar planets) orbiting the star WASP-12, discovered in April of 2008, by the SuperWASP planetary transit survey. The planet takes only a little over one Earth day to orbit its star, in contrast to about 365.25 days for the Earth to orbit the Sun. Its distance from the star (approximately ) is only \textstyle\frac{1}{43} the Earth's distance from the Sun, with an eccentricity the same as Jupiter's. Consequently, it has one of the lowest densities for exoplanets ("inflated" by the flux of energy from the star). On December 3, 2013, scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) reported detecting water in the atmosphere of the exoplanet. In July 2014, NASA announced finding very dry atmospheres on three exoplanets (HD 189733b, HD 209458b, WASP-12b) orbiting sun-like stars.

In September 2017, researchers working on the HST announced that WASP-12b reflects just 6% of the light that shines on its surface. As a result, its reflectivity has been described as "black as asphalt" and as "pitch black", although it is so hot that it emits a reddish glow.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “WASP-12b” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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