The planet WASP-62b is 1.39 times the radius of Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar System. That means it has a radius about 14 times that of Earth.
WASP-62b is roughly half the mass of Jupiter and so, given its bloated radius, it has a much lower density.
The star WASP-62 is 1.28 times the radius of the Sun. Its spectral type is F7 which means that it is hotter and more luminous than our Sun. It has a brightness of visual magnitude 10.3.
WASP-62b orbits at a distance of 8.5 million km from the host star, taking 4.4 days to go round its orbit.
WASP-62 lies in the constellation of Dorado. Its coordinates are right ascension 05:48:34.0 and declination −63:59:18. The system is at a distance of 175 parsecs away from us.
The brightest stars in the plot have magnitude −1 and the faintest have magnitude 6, so, with a visual magnitude of 10.3, WASP-62 is much fainter than these stars. You would need a telescope to see it.
WASP-62b was discovered from South Africa. The WASP-South camera array that first spotted the transits of WASP-62 is situated at the South African Astronomical Observatory, near the town of Sutherland out in the Karoo.
The WASP-South camera array is in the building nearest the camera. The biggest telescope in Africa, SALT, is in the distance on the left.
WASP-62b is notable because it lies in the Continuous Viewing Zone of the James Webb Space Telescope. James Webb is NASA’s $10 billion successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and is designed to study the atmosphere of exoplanets such as the WASP hot Jupiters.
Being in the CVZ (red patch), WASP-62b is likely to be one of the prime early targets for JWST when it launches in 2021.
The discovery of WASP-62b, along with that of six other WASP-South planets, was announced in 2012 in a paper led by Prof. Coel Hellier, who leads the group that built and operated WASP-South.
For more information visit http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/wasp-62_b/.
References
WASP Planets 