The 365 Days Of Astronomy, The Daily Podcast Of The International Year Of Astronomy 2009

At present there are over 5,600 confirmed exoplanets in just over 4,000 star systems. Within this population, about 300–500 exoplanets fall into the curious class known as hot Jupiters — large, Jupiter-like exoplanets that orbit very close to their star. How hot Jupiters form is an area of active research. Recently the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak discovered an exoplanet with a strange orbit that gives clues to the formation of these unusual objects. In this podcast, Dr. Arvind Gupta discusses this rare and unusual planet.    Bios:  Rob Sparks is in the Communications, Education and Engagement group at NSF’s NOIRLab in Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Arvind Gupta is a postdoctoral fellow at NOIRLab in Tucson, Arizona. His primary research focus is on the design, execution, and analysis of exoplanet searches with extreme precision radial velocity spectrographs in pursuit of Earth analog discovery. H is also actively engaged in observational work to discover and characterize long-period giant exoplanets and studi