* Astronomy

Kepler Finds a Very Wobbly Planet

Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know what to wear: Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat! That's the situation on a weird, wobbly world found by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.
The planet, designated Kepler-413b, is located 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It circles a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars every 66 days.
But what makes this planet very unusual is that it wobbles, or precesses, wildly on its spin axis, much like a child's top. The tilt of the spin axis of the planet can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years, leading to the rapid and erratic changes in seasons. Contrast this to the Earth's rotational precession - 23.5 degrees over 26,000 years. The fact that this far-off planet is precessing on a human timescale is simply amazing, say researchers. 
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