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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Oddly cool super-hot planet has an atmosphere it shouldn’t

It’s a mystery why TOI-561 b’s blanket of gases hasn’t boiled off.
An artist’s illustration showing a thick atmosphere above a vast magma ocean on a red exoplanet

The exoplanet TOI-561 b seems to be a hot lava world surrounded by an anomalously thick atmosphere. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

A super-hot planet that orbits its star closely has somehow managed to retain a thick atmosphere — even as the star’s radiation blasts it1.

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Nature 649, 269 (2026)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-04118-w

References

  1. Teske, J. T. et al. Astrophys. J. 995, L39 (2025).

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