Fact Sheet
Roasting Planet
An artist's concept depicts XO-1b, a planet orbiting a Sun-like star about 600 light-years away. A team of professional and amateur astronomers discovered the planet as it passed in front of the star, blocking a little of the star's light and making it appear fainter. Follow-up observations with telescopes at McDonald Observatory found that the planet is about 90 percent as massive as Jupiter, the giant of our own solar system. It orbits the star every four days, indicating that it is much closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun. [Credit: NASA/ESA/G.Bacon (STScI)]
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