NASA is constantly scanning the galaxy in search of new stars, planets, and systems spread out throughout the universe. Researchers have sent great number of probes into space, maybe the most famous are Voyager 1 and Juno, All these tasks had one goal, and that is to explore our solar system and after that to explore beyond it.

The spacecraft called The Kepler has discovered the great majority of exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system. As you probably noticed, most of these planets were named Kepler after this spacecraft.

Scientists find many of new exoplanets every month, but most of them are merely just cold worlds made of rock orbiting their unknown, distant stars. Occasionally, it is possible to discover a planet that is so bizarre to leave all astrophysicists in astonishment. I decided to list some of them.

Planet named OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb

OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is an icy world that is located 13,000 light years from us. Temperatures on this planet range from (-364 °F) -220 degrees Celsius to (-302 °F) to -186 degrees Celsius, which is why it got the name “ice ball planet”.

A light year measures a relative distance, most commonly it’s defined as one year away if you travel at the speed of light. This is the speed of almost 300,000 km per second or 186,000 mps or more than one billion kilometers per hour or 670 million miles per hour. So you must travel a long distance at very high speed to reach this big ball of ice.

Until today, the largest speed we have ever achieved in space happened with New Horizon, a space craft launched in 2006 to do a flyby study of Pluto, its moons, and the Kuiper Belt. New Horizon achieved the speed at over 58,000 kilometers per hour or 36,000 miles/ph, which is very far away from the speed of light. So it is clear that we do not have the technology to go there and visit even our nearest neighboring system which is just few light-years away.

That is why researchers must use long-range technology to find exoplanets very far away as to examine and determine their mass, shape and the composition of their atmospheres.

Planet OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb was discovered using micro lensing, which is a process used to find planets when they pass in a front side of their stars and we are able to see those stars dim briefly.

It is also discovered that all ice on this planet is probably freshwater. But, for sure we won’t be able to use this water in the near future. For us, it would take 13,000 years to reach this planet traveling at the speed of light. Maybe some other advanced alien race is using this exoplanet as a source of freshwater.

The Hot Planet “KELT-9b”

Planet KELT-9b is the hottest planet ever discovered, and it is in the process of disappearing. This world is 650 light years away from our planet Earth, KELT-9b is completely locked with its star, which means that one side of the planet is facing the star constantly and other side is constantly facing the space.

This large gas giant is about three times larger than our Jupiter and it is a burning world at a temperature of 4,315 degrees Celsius or 7,800 °F. This planet is hotter than most stars and it is almost as hot as the surface of our Sun, which is 5,500 degrees Celsius or 9,941 °F.

A couple of billion years from now, KELT-9b will have completely burned off all its gasses and that will be the end of the planet, and its star will remain completely alone in the space.