Planet With a Comet's Tail - Web Extra
A spectacular cloud of gas trails this planet around its star
The planet is a Neptune-sized gas giant orbiting very close to its red-dwarf star. Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope showed that the planet is surrounded by, and trails, a massive cloud of hydrogen gas that is almost as large as the star itself.
Dr. Peter Wheatley, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Warwick in England, says that the gas is being stripped from the atmosphere of the planet by X-rays from the star, at a rate of 1000 tonnes per second. While this seems a tremendous rate, the planet is large enough that it will not run out of gas during the lifetime of the star.
Related Links
- Paper in Nature
- Release from University of Warwick
- Discovery news story
- Popular Science story
(Note: This is web-only interview that was not broadcast on radio)