AFP/NASA – This NASA artist's concept image shows that the hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Hubble space telescope has discovered a planet in our galaxy in the process of being devoured by the star that it orbits, according to a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The doomed planet, dubbed WASP-12b, has the highest known surface temperature of any planet in the Milky Way — around 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,800 degrees Fahrenheit).
But it could be enveloped by its own parent star over the next ten million years, the paper’s authors have concluded.
Using a new instrument called the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph that was installed on Hubble in 2009, the researchers observed how the planet was whipped into an elongated shape by gravitational forces.
