The gusty winds of spring make it a good season for flying a kite. But you might not want to try it on the planet Wasp-127 b – it would be hard to hang on. Winds high above the surface blow at an astounding 20,000 miles per hour – a hundred times faster than winds in the strongest category five hurricanes on Earth.

The star – Wasp-127 – is a lot like the Sun. But the planet isn’t much like any planet in the solar system. It’s much wider than Jupiter, the largest planet. But it’s only one-sixth of Jupiter’s mass. That makes it one of the “puffiest” planets yet seen.

Wasp-127 b was discovered because it passes in front of its parent star every four days. As it does so, starlight filters through the atmosphere. Astronomers use that effect to learn something about the atmosphere.

Recent observations revealed that material in the upper atmosphere is moving extremely fast – blown by the fastest winds yet seen on any planet. The observations also suggested that there’s a big temperature difference between the dawn and evening skies – more than 300 degrees Fahrenheit – one more reason the planet isn’t a good place to fly a kite.

The Wasp-127 system is in the constellation Sextans, the sextant. This evening, it’s well to the lower right of the Moon. But the system is more than 500 light-years away, so the star is too faint to see without a telescope.

Script by Damond Benningfield