Astronomers Using Kepler Discover Very Wobbly Planet
Posted on February 4, 2014
Astronomers using Kepler has discovered a planet that NASA describes as "very wobbly." NASA says the planet wobbles like a toy top.
NASA says in the news release, "Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat. That is the situation on a weird, wobbly world found by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope."
The planet, Kepler-413b, is a super Neptune, a giant gas planet with a mass about 65 times that of Earth. It is located 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It orbits too close to its star for liquid water to exist. The tilt of the Kepler-413b's spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years. By comparison, Earth's rotation axis undergoes a very slow precession of 23.5 degrees over 26,000 years.
A research paper on the newly discovered planet was published here in Earth and Planetary Astrophysics.