TOI-3261b is located in the constellation Hydrus and belongs to a type of planet that seems impossible to form.
A research team led by Dr. Emma Nabbie from the University of Southern Queensland (Australia) has discovered the presence of the strange exoplanet TOI-3261b from the vast dataset sent back to Earth by NASA’s “planet hunter” TESS.
Combining this data with additional observations from several ground-based telescopes, they found that TOI-3261b belongs to a rare class of exoplanets known as “hot Neptune desert.”
TOI-3261b resembles Neptune but is extremely hot – (Photo: NASA).
According to Sci-News, the term “hot Neptune desert” refers to a group of exoplanets that are approximately the size of Neptune from our Solar System but are extremely hot due to their proximity to their host star.
This is one of the rarest types of planets identified among the countless exoplanets in the universe.
According to a publication in the scientific journal Astronomical Journal, the reason for its rarity is that it is very difficult for a planet to maintain a thick atmosphere so close to a star. Hot Neptunes are fundamentally gas giants, hence their atmospheres must be dense.
“Massive stars exert significant gravitational forces on their surroundings, which can strip away the gas layers surrounding a nearby planet,” the authors explain.
Thus, the existence of TOI-3261b in such a state is almost unreasonable according to conventional theories.
This valuable discovery further illustrates how complex and diverse planetary formation models in the universe can be.
Studying how this planet retains its atmosphere will be an exciting task for scientists to pursue in the future.
TOI-3261b is located 978.5 light-years away from Earth, has a size 3.82 times that of Earth but is over 30 times heavier, which is about double the mass of our “cold Neptunes.”
This planet orbits its host star TOI-3261 with a period of just 21 hours, meaning that a year on this world is less than a day on Earth.
