TOI 561b, ein kleiner Exoplanet, ist in der Lage, trotz seiner unmittelbaren Nähe zu den zerstörerischen Explosionen seines Sterns eine Atmosphäre zu behalten, berichten Forscher in Astrophysical Journal Letters

>In *Star Wars,* Anakin Skywalker burned alive on the shores of a roiling lava planet called Mustafar, fueling his tumultuous transition into Darth Vader. Now, astronomers [have found an atmosphere on a Mustafar-like lava world](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae0a4c) orbiting close to its star. Unlike other ultrahot, rocky exoplanets, this one seems to be cloaked in a thick layer of gas, researchers report in the Dec. 20 *Astrophysical Journal Letters.* It’s the most robust evidence yet that these exoplanets retain atmospheres.

>The planet, TOI 561b, was discovered by [the TESS spacecraft](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/launch-tess-nasa-boost-search-exoplanets) in 2020. It has a mass twice that of Earth and completes an orbit around its sunlike star in less than 10 hours.

>Most small planets circling similarly close to their star don’t have atmospheres. The weak gravitational pull of such planets makes it difficult to weigh down and trap fast-moving gas molecules. The nearby stars can batter these worlds with powerful radiation, blowing any loose atmosphere-forming molecules into space.

>“We’d expect that the atmosphere shouldn’t still be there,” says Nicole Wallack, an observational astronomer at Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington, D.C. “But we need to have an atmosphere to explain what we’re seeing.”

[Read more here](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/lava-planet-toi561b-atmosphere-tess) and the [research article here.](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae0a4c)