A planet with a “cucumber” orbit discovered”

And to think that the orbits of our solar system, in their perfection, had enticed Dante Alighieri to capture them in the design of his Paradiso.
Leaving aside astronomical speculations on the supreme poet's knowledge, an extrasolar gaseous planet, TIC 241249530 b, five times more massive than Jupiter, has an extremely eccentric orbit (0.93), almost four times that of Pluto and 47 times that of Earth. Its elliptical orbit around the star TIC 241249530, some 1,100 light years from Earth, is so elongated that it resembles a cucumber.
Another peculiarity is the retrograde orientation of the orbit of TIC 241249530 b, which travels in the opposite direction to the rotation of its primary star, part of a binary system.
Interactions between the planet's orbit and that of its primary star are causing a gradual migration of the planet towards the star. Tidal forces exerted by the star are narrowing and circularising the orbit of TIC 241249530 b, turning it into a hot Jovian, a Jupiter-like gas giant orbiting very close to its star.
Currently, TIC 241249530 b takes about 167 days to complete one orbit, but it is expected that in about 1 billion years, the planet will migrate into a much narrower circular orbit, becoming a hot Jovian with an orbital period of less than 10 days.
This exoplanet, only the second ever discovered migrating to a closer orbit, offers a valuable snapshot of the planetary migration process, helping to understand the formation of hot Jovians.