An international team of astronomers has discovered a new hot Jupiter-class exoplanet using the TESS space observatory. The gas giant orbits the rapidly spinning star TOI-778, which is about three times larger than Jupiter in the Solar System. This is reported in an article published on the arXiv preprint repository.

The newly discovered exoplanet was named TOI-778 b. It has a radius of 1.37 times that of Jupiter and is about 2.8 times heavier than Jupiter. TOI-778 b orbits its parent star at a distance of approximately 0.06 AU every 4.63 days. The equilibrium temperature of the planet is estimated to be around 1561 Kelvin, without taking into account the influence of the atmosphere and underground heat.

Hot Jupiters have high surface temperatures because they are so close to their parent star. TOI-778 is about 71 percent larger and 40 percent larger than the Sun. Researchers estimate that TOI-778 is about 1.95 billion years old and has an effective temperature of about 6,700-6,800 Kelvin. The distance to the star was measured at about 528 light-years. It rotates on its axis at a speed of about 40 kilometers per second.