The Sun, our host star, is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit! That is one of the hottest temperatures we know of. But, what if I told you there is an exoplanet even hotter.
Discovered in 2011 by the Kepler Space Telescope, a planet tremendously far away from Earth (4,015 light-years in the constellation of Cygnus), a planet named Kepler-70 b (but also referred to as KOI-55 b) orbits a B-type (a blue hydrogen main sequence) star. KOI-55 b is 0.006 Astronomical Units (the distance between Earth and the Sun) from its star, taking 0.24 days (5.76 hours) to orbit its star. The planet is a terrestrial planet with a mass of 0.44 of Earths. It used to be a Jupiter-sized planet until it was engulfed by its red giant star, but after a while it was spat back out when its star shrunk and became a B-type star. The planet now has an average temperature of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit (6,800 Celsius) which is hotter than our Sun! This might be the hottest planet ever discovered!
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