For the first time discovered an oval-shaped planet

Although planets slightly distorted by the gravity of their parent star have been recorded, this is the first time a planet shaped like a perfect rugby ball has been recorded.

According to Science Alert, thanks to ESA's CHEOPS space telescope (European Space Agency), a team of scientists led by Dr. Jacques Laskar from the Paris Observatory and the Paris University of Science and Literature (France) found the one-of-a-kind planet WASP-103b, orbiting the star WASP-103 1,800 light-years away.

Graphic depicting the newly discovered oval planet

WASP-103b is a "hot Jupiter", a gas giant like Jupiter, that exists absurdly close to its parent star.

In theory, regions near stars with strong gravity, radiation and stellar winds would make it impossible to clump together, so gaseous planets would not exist. Despite all that, hot Jupiters, which also have strong gravitational pulls like Jupiter, exist in many star systems and often have fierce battles with their parent stars to "seize" the atmosphere.

WASP-103b is 1.5 times the mass of the Solar System's Jupiter and twice the size, up to 20 times hotter. This massive size is due to the fact that the entire planet is being inflated by the star's heat.

Usually hot Jupiters get too close to their parent star as it orbits closer and closer, and the future will be swallowed up by the parent star. However, observations show that WASP-103b is expanding its orbit gradually.

Despite the strength to overcome the parent star's death gravitational pull, the struggle created the planet's strange shape, causing it to be elongated into an ellipse rather than a traditional sphere, and in the field. This case is a perfect rugby ball.

The distortion of a planet will be reflected into a set of parameters collectively known as the Love number. This romantic-sounding parameter may reflect the properties of the planet, because the way a planet deforms is closely related to what material it is made of, thereby providing scientists with "wings". magic gates" to worlds too far away to observe directly.

The study has just been published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.