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Scientists Find Bizarre, Lemon-Shaped World Orbiting City-Size Star

Deep within the planet, carbon clouds can condense and form diamonds, NASA says.

Headshot of Ty Pendlebury
Headshot of Ty Pendlebury
Ty Pendlebury Editor
TV and home video editor Ty Pendlebury joined CNET Australia in 2006, and moved to New York City to be a part of CNET in 2011. He tests, reviews and writes about the latest TVs and audio equipment. When he's not playing Call of Duty he's eating whatever cuisine he can get his hands on. He has a cat named after one of the best TVs ever made.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
Ty Pendlebury
Pink lemon-shaped planet

An artist's depiction of the new lemon-shaped planet. 

 NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

Astronomers have discovered a lemon-shaped planet that orbits a tiny star, but that's not the only weird thing about it.

Scientists using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope discovered the Jupiter-size planet, named PSR J2322-2650b, which is the first to have an atmosphere composed of helium and molecular carbon. 

"Soot clouds likely float through the air, and deep within the planet, these carbon clouds can condense and form diamonds," NASA said in a statement.

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"The planet orbits a star that's completely bizarre -- (the star has) the mass of the Sun, but the size of a city," said the University of Chicago's Michael Zhang, the principal investigator on this study. 

Researchers say the planet is one hundred times closer to its star than the Earth is to the sun, and the intense gravitational forces are what are pulling it into its bizarre, lemon-shaped form.

Music fans may know that the indie band The National wrote a song about life in Lemonworld back in 2011. Do we need to scour The National's back catalog for further evidence of interstellar learnings? My number one candidate is The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness. Is this proof of Planet X? I say, yes.