EXO-PLANETS: Cotton Candy Planet (Kepler-51d)

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God... Hebrews 11:3

MORE of the DIVERSITY of the Planets......points to DESIGN:

"A bizarre, ultra-light planet is cloaked in such a thick haze that even JWST can’t reveal its composition. Its unusual size and orbit are forcing scientists to rethink how planets form.

A newly published study suggests that a dense haze surrounding the

ultra-low-density planet Kepler-51d may be concealing both its composition and how it formed. Researchers led by Penn State used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to investigate this unusual “super-puff” planet, which already challenges standard models of planetary formation. What they found added to the mystery. The haze enveloping the planet appears to be the thickest ever observed, making it extremely difficult to detect the chemical signatures in its atmosphere.

Kepler-51 is a star about 2,615 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. It hosts four known planets, at least three of which are classified as super-puffs. These worlds are roughly the size of Saturn but contain only a few times the mass of Earth. Among them, Kepler-51d is both the coolest and the least dense.

“We think the three inner planets orbiting Kepler-51 have tiny cores and huge atmospheres giving them a density akin to cotton candy,” said Jessical Libby-Roberts. “These ultra-low-density super-puff planets are rare, and they defy conventional understanding of how gas giants form. And if explaining how one formed wasn’t difficult enough, this system has three!”

“It seems very similar to the haze we see on Saturn’s largest moon Titan, which has hydrocarbons like methane, but at a much larger scale. Kepler-51d seems to have a huge amount of haze — almost the radius of Earth — which would be one of the largest we’ve seen on a planet yet.” 

SciTechDaily