A multinational team of researchers under the direction of professor Abhijit Chakraborty of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, discovered the densest extraterrestrial planet, which is 13 times larger than Jupiter.

This is the third exoplanet that the scientists from PRL have found in India. ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters’ has published the full facts of the discovery.

The group of researchers, which included members from Germany, Switzerland, the United States, and India, used the PRL Advanced Radial-velocity Abu-sky Search spectrograph (PARAS) at the Gurushikhar Observatory in Mount Abu to precisely measure the planet's mass.

The exoplanet is 14 g/cm3 in mass and according to the Indian Space Research Organisation what sets this discovery apart is that the planet falls into the transition mass range of massive giant planets and low-mass brown dwarfs.

"The detection of such systems provides valuable insights into the formation, migration, and evolution mechanisms of massive exoplanets," ISRO said in a statement.  The planet is 731 light years from Earth and revolves around its star seven days a week. With a surface temperature of 1396 degrees Celsius, the planet was found to be extremely hot.

The star it orbits is called TOI4603 or HD 245134, and Nasa's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) had initially declared the star as a possible candidate to host a secondary body of unknown nature. The body has now been confirmed to be a planet and has been named TOI 4603b or HD 245134b.

One of the most massive and dense giant planets that orbit its host star at a distance less than one-tenth of the distance between the Sun and Earth is the recently discovered exoplanet TOI 4603b.