Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2023

48 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2023 ASTRO PUBLISHING ever detected around a red dwarf star and is estimated to have an av- erage density akin to that of a marshmallow. Red dwarf stars are the smallest and dimmest members of so-called main- sequence stars — stars that convert hydrogen into helium in their cores at a steady rate. Though “cool” compared to stars like our Sun, red dwarf stars can be extremely active and erupt with powerful flares capa- ble of stripping a planet of its at- mosphere, making this star system a seemingly inhospitable location to form such a gossamer planet. “Giant planets around red dwarf stars have traditionally been thought to be hard to form,” says Shubham Kan- odia, a researcher at Carnegie In- stitution for Science’s Earth and Planets Laboratory and first author by NOIRLab - Charles Blue ‘Marshmallow’ world orbiting a cool red dwarf star A stronomers using the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in rizona, a Program of NSF’s NOIR- Lab, have observed an unusual Jupiter-like planet in orbit around a cool red dwarf star. Located approx- imately 580 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Auriga the Char- ioteer, this planet, identified as TOI- 3757 b, is the lowest-density planet