Huh.

A giant planet candidate transiting a white dwarf

In short: 80 light years away in the constellation Draco a Jupiter-sized (up to about 14 times as massive, thought) planet orbits a 6-billion year old white dwarf star a mere 11,000 miles in diameter, once every 1.4 days. The orbit is apparently stable.

There is virtually not a chance in hell that the gas giant evolved in that orbit around the original star. When the original star died and became the white dwarf, it likely would have shed a *lot* of mass; in which case any planets orbiting it would have moved outwards or been lost entirely. However, had there been other massive planets, other small stars, or perhaps wandering rogue stars, gravitational interactions could have knocked the planet into a highly elliptical orbit with e very close periastron. Over time the elliptical orbit could have circularized that close in.

What I’ve found hasn’t given data for the semi-major axis of the planetary orbit… but it’s got to be pretty close. Should be interesting to see what sort of system this is and how warm the planet is. Being 14 times more massive than Jupiter means that it could *easily* have multiple moons Earth-sized or even bigger, depending of course on tidal disruption from the star. It would be an interesting place if the planet is close to the white dwarfs habitable zone.