An international group of astronomers has found a new exoplanet circling a sunlike star through the Next Generation Transit Survey. The planet, called NGTS-39 b, is roughly Jupiter-sized with an equilibrium temperature near 519 K. Details appear in a July 2 paper on the arXiv preprint server.
NGTS-39, also known as TIC-453147896, is a bright F9-type star about 910 light-years away. Observations by NASA’s TESS satellite from 2019 to 2024 first showed a transit signal. Follow-up photometry with NGTS telescopes and radial-velocity data from CORALIE and HARPS instruments confirmed the planet.
The world has a radius of 1.09 Jupiter radii and a mass of 1.47 Jupiter masses, giving a density of 1.411 g/cm³. It completes an orbit every 58.2 days at 0.31 AU on an eccentric path. Researchers classify it as a long-period warm Jupiter composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, though its density suggests extra heavy elements.
The host star is 16 percent larger and more massive than the Sun, with a temperature of 6,053 K and an age of about 2.2 billion years. The discovery adds to the limited sample of transiting gas giants on wide orbits. The planet’s location near the nitrogen-ammonia transition makes it suitable for atmospheric studies. Radial-velocity hints suggest a possible outer companion, pending further checks.
