Rare beast: An eccentric Neptunish exoplanet orbits a nearby red dwarf star
One of my favorite aspects about the vast number of exoplanets detected so far — coming up on 5,000 of these alien worlds — is that with so many discovered, you can see trends in their characteristics, as well as find oddballs that fall far from the trends. In our solar system, for example, the planets are well-spaced and have fairly circular orbits. But that’s not always the case.