May 7, 2007 — Watching the scale? Stay away from HAT-P-2b, a fatty-boy planet with so much gravity a 150-pound person would weigh in at more than a ton.
The gas giant, estimated to be eight times the mass of Jupiter, was found by a team of astronomers orbiting a beast of a star located about 440 light years away in the constellation Hercules.
Not only is HAT-P-2b the largest planet found to date, it's also one of weirdest, circling its mother sun in a highly elliptical track that comes as close as 3.1 million miles before sashaying three times as far away. And it makes the trek, sizzling near the sun and freezing on the outback, every 5.6 days.
From Discovery News
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