Mysterious giant planet with a helium trail behind

Comets are not the only cosmic objects that can have tails. Researchers use the CARMENES device on a telescope in Spain's Calar Alto Observatory to determine a total of five helium-bearing exoplanets.

According to new research from NASA, a planet outside our Solar System seems to have lost its atmosphere and boasts a helium-like tail of a comet. The reason is that radiation from the host star impacts.

The planet seems to have lost its atmosphere and boasts a helium tail like a comet.(Image source: Dailymail).

The finding, the researchers say, could help explain how gas planets lose the atmosphere over time to become rocky planets similar to Venus or Earth.

In the new discovery, researchers used the CARMENES device on the 3.5-meter telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory in Almería, Spain identified a total of five extracellular helium-bearing planets.

However, including a planet called WASP-69b , it seems to be left behind most of the gas and forms a strange helium tail.

Lisa Nortmann, an IAC researcher and lead author of a paper published in Science magazine, said: "We have observed this planet as it enters the spectral region where helium absorbs light."
According to the team, the helium tail is following WASP-69b because ultraviolet radiation from the host star impacts and separates them from the planet's atmosphere to form the trailing tail.