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Exoplanets

Migration of giants

Nature volume 537, pages 496–497 (2016)Cite this article

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The origin of hot Jupiters, large gaseous planets in close orbits around stars, is unknown. Observations suggest that such planets are abundant in stellar clusters, and can result from encounters with other celestial bodies.

Hot Jupiters are a rare and peculiar class of exoplanet that have masses comparable to that of Jupiter and short orbital periods of typically four to five days1. The first hot Jupiter was discovered2 in 1995, and, since then, astronomers have debated the physical processes that are responsible for their production. Because hot Jupiters are the most extreme outcome of planet formation, discovering their origin will considerably refine our understanding of how planets are assembled and how their orbits evolve. Writing in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Brucalassi et al.3 find that hot Jupiters are five to ten times more abundant in stellar clusters than elsewhere in the Milky Way, and the authors provide evidence for a scenario that explains the production of such planets.

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Figure 1: Possible scenario for the dynamical migration of a hot Jupiter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Amaury Triaud is at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK.,

    Amaury Triaud

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  1. Amaury Triaud
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Correspondence to Amaury Triaud.

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Triaud, A. Migration of giants. Nature 537, 496–497 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19430

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