{"id":17842,"date":"2026-06-25T18:31:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T18:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=17842"},"modified":"2026-06-25T18:31:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T18:31:57","slug":"astronomers-find-biggest-super-puff-planets-yet-that-are-lighter-than-cotton-candy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=17842","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers find biggest super-puff planets yet that are lighter than cotton candy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>By MARCIA DUNN<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Astronomers have uncovered a pair of giant planets that are lighter than cotton candy \u2014 super-puffs the size of Jupiter.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=17840\">A giraffe named Gracie escaped in Texas. No one can seem to find her<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The featherweight pair \u2014 orbiting a star 1,110 light-years away \u2014 are the biggest exoplanets found to have less density than cotton candy.<\/p>\n<p>That makes them the lightest known planets of their size, said the University of Oxford\u2019s George Dransfield.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese two planets have densities comparable to a nice blob of shaving foam, fresh from the can,\u201d Dransfield said in an email. She and her team reported their findings Wednesday in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.<\/p>\n<p>Dransfield suspects these fluffy, wispy worlds are probably white or blue, depending on whether the skies there are cloudy \u2014 no shades of cotton-candy pink. The planets are probably mostly hydrogen and helium, although it will take follow-up observations by NASA\u2019s Webb Space Telescope to confirm their chemical makeup.<\/p>\n<p>Detected by NASA\u2019s Tess satellite over the past decade, these two especially puffy-puffs orbit a star in the southern constellation Volans, known as the flying fish. The researchers studied the planets\u2019 orbits using telescopes on Earth to determine their density, from 1,110 light-years away. A light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles (9.7 trillion kilometers).<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=17838\">Vice President JD Vance\u2019s visit shuts down these roads in Yorba Linda today<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jupiter, by comparison, is as much as 35 times denser than these two lightweights.<\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Considered rare in the cosmos, super-puffs are thought to form around the disk of gas and dust around a newborn star where there is more gas than dust. They shed much of the material over time, stripping down even more.<\/p>\n<p>NASA\u2019s tally of worlds outside our solar system currently stands at nearly 6,300 confirmed. Fewer than 40 are super-puffs, according to Dransfield.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUltimately, by studying exotic systems containing rare planet types, we add further pieces to the puzzle of planet formation and learn more about our place in the cosmos,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=17836\">Bosnia-Herzegovina all but certain to face US in World Cup knockout match<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The two so-called super-puffs are the size of Jupiter \u2014 the biggest worlds found so far to have less density than cotton candy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Astronomers find biggest super-puff planets yet that are lighter than cotton candy - 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