New Class of Planets

This is amazing to think about, imagine a planet the size of Jupiter that goes around the sun in a single day:

‘Bulge’ yields new planet class

“Astronomers have discovered a new class of planets that take less than a day to whiz round their parent stars. Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope revealed the existence of the planets, which orbit closer to their stars than any previously known. Dr Kailash Sahu and colleagues report finding the planets in a faint, crowded star field in a region of the Milky Way known as the galactic bulge.

The team has published its findings in the scientific journal Nature. It uncovered the existence of 16 planets in the category of close orbiters, taking between 0.4 and 3.2 days to go around their respective stars. Many of the planets are the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar System. Two of the 16 have orbits of less than a day, creating a new category of “ultra-short” orbit exoplanets.”