All you need to know about ‘hell planet’ Janssen and the reason behind it

40 lightyears from Earth, planet Janssen or 55 Cancri e is called the ‘hell planet’. It has lava raining down, a core of diamonds and oceans of molten lava on its surface. Orbiting the star Copernicus, Janssen has awed scientists and led to studies which also includes one by NASA. 

A new study has attempted to reveal the mystery behind the planet’s horror terrain and atmosphere. Quite literally hellish, the planet could have reached its current stage because of a “gravitational anomaly”. The study says things were better on Janssen until it got pulled extremely near its sun and turned into a furnace. 

The planet is officially named after Zacharias Janssen, the dubious inventor of the world’s first optical telescope. 40 lightyears away from us, 55 Cancri e is 70 times nearer to its sun than Earth is to our ‘Sun’. Compared to our 365-day year, a year on Janssen is just 18 hours, an orbital analysis published in the journal Nature Astronomy recently revealed. 

Janssen orbits Copernicus, a star which is one half of a binary system. Apart from Janssen, Copernicus has 4 other planets. The environment may have contributed to the planet always being a ‘hot’ one, but the incredibly nightmarish conditions may have resulted due to it being pulled towards its sun due to shifts in gravity because of the sun, its binary partner star and the 4 planets. 

Lead author of the study Lily Zhao, who is a researcher at New York’s Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA), says that the Copernicus planet system is “one of the systems with the most planets that we’ve found”.

The Lowell Discovery Telescope in Arizona was used in this study. They reconstructed the “unusually close” orbit of Janssen along the equator of its sun, much closer compared to Earth. 

READ | NASA: Hubble Space Telescope captures dual views of unusual star cluster NGC 1850

40 lightyears from Earth, planet Janssen or 55 Cancri e is called the ‘hell planet’. It has lava raining down, a core of diamonds and oceans of molten lava on its surface. Orbiting the star Copernicus, Janssen has awed scientists and led to studies which also includes one by NASA. 

A new study has attempted to reveal the mystery behind the planet’s horror terrain and atmosphere. Quite literally hellish, the planet could have reached its current stage because of a “gravitational anomaly”. The study says things were better on Janssen until it got pulled extremely near its sun and turned into a furnace. 

The planet is officially named after Zacharias Janssen, the dubious inventor of the world’s first optical telescope. 40 lightyears away from us, 55 Cancri e is 70 times nearer to its sun than Earth is to our ‘Sun’. Compared to our 365-day year, a year on Janssen is just 18 hours, an orbital analysis published in the journal Nature Astronomy recently revealed. 

Janssen orbits Copernicus, a star which is one half of a binary system. Apart from Janssen, Copernicus has 4 other planets. The environment may have contributed to the planet always being a ‘hot’ one, but the incredibly nightmarish conditions may have resulted due to it being pulled towards its sun due to shifts in gravity because of the sun, its binary partner star and the 4 planets. 

Lead author of the study Lily Zhao, who is a researcher at New York’s Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA), says that the Copernicus planet system is “one of the systems with the most planets that we’ve found”.

The Lowell Discovery Telescope in Arizona was used in this study. They reconstructed the “unusually close” orbit of Janssen along the equator of its sun, much closer compared to Earth. 

READ | NASA: Hubble Space Telescope captures dual views of unusual star cluster NGC 1850