Astronomers at the SuperWASP-South Observatory in South Africa have reported the discovery of three new gas giants: two of the newly identified alien worlds have been classified as so-called 'warm Jupiters' and the remaining as 'super-Neptune'. The results were presented in an article published on January 13 on the Arxiv preprint server.
'In this article, we present the discovery of three transiting exoplanets using WASP: warm Jupiters orbiting a metal-rich star are designated WASP-91b and WASP-105b warm Jupiters, and WASP-107b represents a warm super-Neptune or sub-Saturn.' researchers report.
Observations have shown that WASP-91b is similar in size to Jupiter, but 34 percent more massive than the largest planet in our solar system. The exoplanet has been classified as 'warm Jupiter' as it has a uniform temperature of 1,160 K. It takes 2.8 days to orbit its K3 host star in the constellation Toucan.
Another 'warm Jupiter', WASP-105b, also has a size comparable to that of Jupiter and has a radius of approximately 0.96 Jupiter's radii. This gaseous exoworld is more massive, but colder than WASP-91. It has a mass of about 1.8 Jupiter masses and a uniform temperature of 900 K. The host star WASP-105 is located in the constellation Phoenix and has a spectral type K2. WASP-105b orbits the star every 7.9 days.
WASP-107b is much less massive than the two above-described planets and has the lowest mass on the list of exoplanets detected by WASP to date. While it is no more than 96 percent of the size of Jupiter, it has a mass of only 12 percent of the mass of the gas giant in the solar system. Thus, astronomers have classified this world as a super-Neptune or sub-Saturn. At a uniform temperature of 770 K, it has an orbital period of about 5.7 days and revolves around the star K6 in the constellation Virgo.
