Astronomers have made new observations of a giant exoplanet that survived the violent death of its host star, offering clues about the fate of our solar system’s largest planets when the sun dies in 5 billion years.

WD 1856 b: A Baffling Exoplanet

Located 80 light-years from Earth, WD 1856 b is a Jupiter-size planet that orbits a dead white dwarf star. The planet is seven times larger than its Earth-size star and completes one orbit around the dead star every 34 hours.

The discovery of WD 1856 b has puzzled astronomers, as it is unclear how the planet survived its host’s destruction. To understand the planet’s unlikely journey, astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to capture the latest glimpses of the planet and measure its atmosphere, mass, and temperature.

Implications for Our Solar System

The WD 1856 system serves as a preview for what could occur in our own solar system. Like the host star of WD 1856 b, our sun will swell into a red giant in about 5 billion years, engulfing the closest planets like Mercury and Venus. The fate of Earth remains unclear, but the giant planets in our solar system may endure and continue to evolve for billions of years.

Original reporting: KRDO (Colorado Springs metro) — read the source article.