Indian scientists have discovered a new planet nearly one-and-a-half times the size of Jupiter.

The astronomers used the PRL Advanced Radial-Velocity Abu-sky Search (PARAS) optical spectrograph to find the celestial body orbiting an aging star approximately 725 light years from Earth.

TOI 1789, as the star is called, has a mass approximately 70 per cent that of Jupiter – despite its larger stature – and orbits its host star in 3.2 days at a distance only one-tenth that of the Earth and our own Sun.

This proximity means the star is incredibly hot, reaching a temperature of over 1700 degrees Celsius. It is one of the lowest density planets ever discovered.

Planets like these are known as “Hot-Jupiters�, and its discovery will help scientists understand the evolution of planetary systems around evolving or older stars – with this discovery being one of the few systems that features an evolved star with a close-in planet. Currently, scientists are only aware of 10 similar systems in the universe.

The discovery team, led by Professor Abhijit Chakraborty, includes students, team members, and international collaborators from Europe and the United States, with the research published on 23 October in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

This is not the first planet that the Indian scientists have discovered; in 2018, they spotted a sub-Saturn object orbiting a star 600 light-years away.

On that massive planet, 27 times the size of the Earth, a year lasts under 20 days, with a surface temperature of approximately 600 degrees Celsius.