One of the most inflated giant planets discovered
http://phys.org/news/2016-08-inflated-giant-planets.html
An international team of astronomers has detected a highly inflated giant planet orbiting a mildly evolved star. According to a research paper published
Aug. 16 on the arXiv pre-print server, the newly found exoplanet, designated KELT-12b, is one of the most inflated "hot Jupiters" known to date.
A giant exoworld that expands in size when its parent star is at the end of its life is called "inflated." This inflation process is very often seen in
the so-called "hot Jupiters"—gas giant planets similar in characteristics to the solar system's biggest planet, with orbital periods of less than 10 days.
They have high surface temperatures as they orbit their parent stars very closely. The newly discovered KELT-12b is another great example of an inflated
"hot Jupiter."
KELT-12b was spotted by a team of researchers led by Daniel Stevens of the Ohio State University. For their observations, the astronomers employed the KELT-
North telescope at the Winer Observatory in Arizona. KELT-North is one of the two robotic telescopes in the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT)
survey, whose main goal is to search for transiting exoplanets around bright stars.
