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Kepler 51 is 2,600 light years away in the constellation Cygnus. |
A new class of exoplanet has been discovered, the "super-puffs". First seen in 2012, these exoplanets are similar in size to the gas giants in our solar system, only they are much less dense. Made of a puffier material, they bear an amusing resemblance to cotton candy.
They are thought to occur in relatively young solar systems, such as the Kepler 51 system, where three of these types have already been discovered. This system is only about 500 million years old, a baby compared to our 4.6-billion-year-old sun. It's thought that they form beyond the star's "snow line", where temperatures are too cold for the planet to form the gaseous compositions seen in typical giants like ours. The planets are thought to have migrated inward, shedding a tremendous amount of material in the process, similar to the way a comet works. After a few million years, they'll have shed enough of it to more closely resemble our gas giants.
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