Stars live long but not infinite lives, and eventually the fate of most planets orbiting them is to perish and land on the surface of a dying star. The planet was discovered in the Kepler 1658 star system , 3,000 light-years from the sun.
This Jupiter-like planet is so close to its star that it orbits only 3.8 Earth days a year.
Death on the surface of an aging star appears to be the fate of most planets orbiting its star. Billions of years from now, when the sun ages, this fate may befall our planet, although whether humans will still be around is a big question.
Now, for the first time, astronomers have discovered an exoplanet around a dying star: It's called Kepler 1658b because it was discovered by the Kepler space telescope, which has been searching for worlds outside our solar system since 2009.
Kepler-1658b has been dubbed a "hot Jupiter": astronomers call it an exoplanet roughly the same mass and size as Jupiter, but very close to their star. For example, the distance between Kepler-1658b and a star is eight times smaller than the distance between the Sun and the nearest planet, Mercury.
A study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters shows that Kepler-1658b has a spiral orbit with an orbital period that decreases by 131 milliseconds per year. This is quite impressive, since the planet orbits its star in 3.8 Earth days. Considering that Kepler-1658 has entered the subgiant stage (1.5 times the mass of the sun), according to astronomical standards, the planet will soon be destroyed by the tidal force .
Astronomers plan to conduct ongoing observations of the Kepler-1658 system to track further changes in the planet's orbit and expand our understanding of planetary decay at the end of the star's lifetime. This will not only allow us to learn more about exoplanets, but also give us an idea of what awaits our own world when our solar system ends.
