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NASA's TESS spacecraft discovers a weird system of exoplanets unlike anything seen before

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An illustration of a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting its star with very different siblings (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva)) Using NASA's exoplanet-hunting spacecraft TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and Antarctic Search for Transiting ExoPlanets (ASTEP) on the Antarctic Plateau, astronomers have discovered a rare and uniquely weird planetary system. The extrasolar planets, or exoplanets , that swirl around the star TOI-201 have orbits that are changing so rapidly that astronomers can see the changes in real time. The behavior of the system, located around 370 light-years from Earth, is something scientists have never seen before. "Most planetary systems appear as 'peas in a pod,' meaning the planets have a similar range of parameters and share a similar orbital plane," team member Amaury Triaud, from the University of Birmingham in the U.K., said in a statement.…

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