(Independent) – Nasa has found a strange alien planet sitting outside of our solar system. The world is cool and small: two characteristics that make it a very strange thing indeed for scientists to find. The little planet known as HD 21749b is the third planet to be found by TESS, Nasa’s new planet-hunting telescope. It goes around its star on a long orbit, taking a relatively leisurely 36 days. Despite that proximity, it is
quite cool at around 300 degrees Fahrenheit. As such it could be a very important way for scientists to find out about such relatively little and temperate worlds. “It’s the coolest small planet that we know of around a star this bright,” says Diana Dragomir, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, who led the new discovery. READ MORE
