Imagine a planet the size of Neptune, itself about four times the size of our home planet. Instead of orbiting our Sun, this exoplanet revolves around a star in the Virgo constellation roughly 200 light-years from Earth. Perhaps most notably, it has a very low mass — 10% the mass of Jupiter despite being 80% its volume, with an atmosphere of water vapor, methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and ammonia. Which means it probably smells pretty gnarly.

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Meet WASP-107 b, a planet that has long transfixed astronomers ever since it was discovered in 2017 with help from an array of telescopes known as the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP), which is also where its name comes from.

Now a recent study in the journal Nature Astronomy reveals something new and enigmatic about WASP-107 b. It has to do with all of those light gases that comprise the planet's atmosphere, or more specifically how they are composed within the atmosphere. Although most planets have relatively even atmospheres, WASP-107 b's is a few hundred meters taller on one side than on the other. This leads to more serious limb asymmetry, or the contrast between morning and evening conditions at a planet's opposite sides.

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Dr. Matthew N. Murphy, lead author of the Nature Astronomy study and an astronomer at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, told Salon that the new findings help astronomers better understand not only this weird distant world, but our own........

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