Typically, when we think of exoplanets, we think of neat spheres floating directly in front of their star, which acts as a giant spotlight. From our vantage point, they would look more like two perfect two dimensional circles than spheres, though. But nature is almost never so clean-cut. A new paper published in Nature Astronomy from researchers at Cornell and the University of Bristol details the first-ever study of an exoplanet that is noticeably lopsided.

The planet, WASP-17 b, has been a favorite of exoplanet researchers since it was discovered in 2009. It’s located around 1,300 light years away in the constellation Scorpius, and is what we now call a “hot Jupiter” - but an extreme version of that category. Its year is only four days long, and while it has only about half the mass of Jupiter, it is puffed up to nearly twice its diameter, giving it a density equivalent to styrofoam.…