An international team of astronomers led by Kaloyan Penev of Princeton University has discovered a giant ‘Hot Jupiter’ exoplanet. This Hot Jupiter is called HATS-18b which is an interesting planet that rotates its parent star. It is so powerful that it can influence the rotation of its star with its gravity. It is about 2,100 light years away.

Exoplanets are planets which orbit a star outside the solar system. Hot Jupiters are giant exoplanets which are also known as roaster planets. These Giant exoplanets orbit close to their parent stars. This newly discovered exoplanet orbits its star in just 0.84 days and has a radius about 1.34 times that of Jupiter.

The team used the Hungarian-made Automated Telescope Network-South (HATSouth) to find exoplanets orbiting HATS-18b. HATSouth is used over 10,000 images between April 2011 and July 2013 in observing this campaign. It is said that this has twice the mass of the Jovian Gas Giant in our Solar System.

“The high planet mass, combined with its short orbital period, implies strong tidal coupling between the planetary orbit and the star,” said one of the researchers.

The authors noted, “The HATS-18 system is among the best systems (and often the best system) for testing a multitude of star–planet interactions, be they gravitational, magnetic or radiative, as well as planet formation and migration theories.”