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Wasp 12-b is being cooked and contorted into an oval shape by its parent star

Located some 600 light-years away in the constellation Auriga, Wasp-12b is slowly being eaten by its Sun-like star.power inverter The giant planet is orbiting so close to its parent star that it is being superheated to a scorching temperature of 1,500C and distorted into a rugby-ball shape by its sun's gravity.

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Wasp-12b

Type: Giant planet

Distance: 600 light-years

Size: Radius is three times larger than Jupiter's

The planet's atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times the radius of Jupiter and material is spilling on to the Sun-like star. "We see a huge cloud of material around the planet, which is escaping and will be captured by the star," said astronomer Carole Haswell of The Open University.

Haswell and her colleagues used the Hubble Space Telescope to confirm earlier predictions about the planet, publishing their findings in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters in 2010. They estimate that the planet may have just 10 million years left before it is completely obliterated.

Astronomers have found several other examples of worlds in the process of being devoured by their stars, or being heated up so much that their atmosphere escapes into space, forming a comet-like tail.

Over the last two decades, astronomers have catalogued around 850 planets outside our  solar panel ystem. And the search for worlds orbiting other stars is turning up some weird and wonderful characters.

From a scorched gas giant that's darker than coal, to a planet packed with diamond, here are some of the oddballs-in-chief.

Quadruple sunset

In a memorable scene from the film Star Wars, Luke Skywalker looks out over the horizon while two suns set in the sky of his home planet Tatooine. Astronomers have already discovered several "Tatooine" systems, where planets orbit double stars.

But this year, a team comprising volunteers and professional astronomers reported finding a planet illuminated by four stars - the first known of its type.

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PH1

Type: Giant planet

Distance: 5,000 light-years

Size: Radius is six times larger than Earth's (Neptune-sized)

The distant world orbits one pair of stars and a second stellar pair revolve around them. The planet is being tugged on by the gravitational forces from four different stars yet, despite this complicated environment, PH1 is able to maintain a stable orbit.

The discovery was made by volunteers using the Planethunters.org website along with a team from UK and US institutes. Named PH1 after the website, it is located in the constellation Cygnus.

At the time of the discovery, Dr Chris Lintott from Oxford University, grid tie inverter told BBC News this was "absolutely not what we would have expected".