* Astronomy

Hot Jupiters courting baby stars?

Although first detected 20 years ago, hot Jupiters are still enigmatic bodies. These celestial objects are giant Jupiter-like exoplanets that orbit 20 times closer to their host stars than the Earth does to the Sun. Using the ESPaDOnS spectro-polarimeter on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Matysse team led by Dr J.-F. Donati (Toulouse, CNRS) reports the preliminary evidence that a hot Jupiter orbits a 2-My star of the Taurus star forming region. This planet, yet to be confirmed, has a mass of 1.4 Jupiter mass and a 6-day period orbit and is unveiled by the gravitational pull it imprints on its star, once the stellar activity features are modeled. This discovery could help us better understand how planetary systems like (or unlike) the solar system form and evolve into maturity. This could also be the first exoplanet ever revealed by CFHT, a nice introduction to the coming SPIRou planet search survey. 
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