Newly discovered planet candidate, PTF08-8695b orbits its star in 11 hours

A newly discovered planet candidate, PTF08-8695b, might be one of our galaxy's youngest and most unique. The planet has an orbit which it completes in only 11 hours around a star 1,100 light years from earth.

The new planet candidate is a "hot Jupiter," a term for hot planets having large masses and short orbital periods, but its already short life might not last for much longer, as its proximity to the host star is slowly killing it.

According to researchers, PTFO8-8695 b's outer layers are being ripped away by the gravity pull of its nearby star. "A handful of known planets are in similarly small orbits, but because this star is only 2 million years old, this is one of the most extreme examples," astronomer Christopher Johns-Krull from Rice University said in a statement.

The planet candidate was indentified in 2012, by an international survey called the Palomar Transit Factory and even though it had only been on our radars for a short time, no one was quite sure just how long this potential planet would continue to exist.

''A handful of known planets are in similarly small orbits,'' John-Krull said in the press release, ''but because this star is only 2 million years old this is one of the most extreme examples.''

Astronomers discovered the exoplanet when they noticed that the brightness of the sun it orbited was occasionally dimmed.

In order to determine whether this was due to a planet passing in front of it, astronomers analysed light emitted by highly energised hydrogen atoms, or H alpha atoms.

The analysis revealed that there were two sources of H alpha atoms: the star, and a moving H alpha source that they concluded was a planet.

''When a planet transits a star, you can determine the orbital period of the planet and how fast it is moving toward you or away from you as it orbits,'' explained astronomer Lisa Prato of the Lowell Observatory. ''And it turned out that the velocity of the planet was exactly where this extra bit of H-alpha emission was moving back and forth,'' www.csmonitor.com reported.