A planet with a “cucumber” orbit discovered”

And to think that the orbits of our solar system, in their perfection, had inspired Dante Alighieri to include them in his design of Paradise.
Leaving aside astronomical speculation about the knowledge of the great poet, 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, about 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 the planet to gradually migrate towards the star. The tidal forces exerted by the star are shrinking and circularising the orbit of TIC 241249530 b, transforming it into a hot Jupiter, a gas giant similar to Jupiter that orbits very close to its star.
Currently, TIC 241249530 b takes approximately 167 days to complete one orbit, but it is predicted that in about 1 billion years, the planet will migrate into a much tighter circular orbit, becoming a hot Jupiter with an orbital period of less than 10 days.
This exoplanet, only the second ever discovered migrating towards a tighter orbit, offers a valuable snapshot of the planetary migration process, helping to understand the formation of hot Jupiters.