Exoplanet WASP-69b has a cometlike tail – this unique feature is helping scientists like me learn more about how planets evolve

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Exoplanet WASP-69b has a cometlike tail – this unique feature is helping scientists like me learn more about how planets evolve

WASP-69b closely orbits its sun. W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam MakarenkoLocated 163 light-years from Earth, a Jupiter-sized exoplanet named WASP-69b offers astrophysicists a window into the dynamic processes that shape planets across the galaxy. The star it orbits is baking and stripping away the planet’s atmosphere, and that escaped atmosphere is being sculpted by the star into a vast, cometlike tail at least 350,000 miles long. I’m an astrophys…