For the first time, astronomers witnessed a gigantic exoplanet dramatically vanish from view. But the “hot Jupiter” located about 1,000 light-years from Earth didn’t evaporate into the vacuum of space. Instead, the gravitational pull from an uncomfortably close neighbor is causing TOI-2535 b to wobble in its orbit thanks to the same dynamics dictating solar and lunar eclipses. The unusual discovery is detailed in a study recently published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, and relies on observations gathered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) orbital telescope.
“We think of the universe as resembling clockwork, where everything is regular, but that’s not true,” Samuel Yee, a University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) astronomer and study co-author, explained in a recent profile. “If there are multiple planets in a system, they can affect each other’s orbits.”
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