hot jupiter tagged posts

HD 80606 b (rendered here) stands out amid the hundreds of exoplanets discovered recently because of its highly eccentric orbit. Researchers have studied how the planet’s temperature changes as it approaches, sweeps by, and moves away from its star. HD 80606 b (rendered here) stands out amid the hundreds of exoplanets discovered recently because of its highly eccentric orbit. Researchers have studied how the planet’s temperature changes as it approaches, sweeps by, and moves away from its star. Credit: Courtesy of the researchers and JPL

The basic chemistry for life has been detected in a second hot gas planet, HD 209458b, depicted in this artist’s concept. Two of NASA’s Great Observatories – the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, yielded spectral observations that revealed molecules of carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor in the planet’s atmosphere. HD 209458b, bigger than Jupiter, occupies a tight, 3.5-day orbit around a sun-like star about 150 light years away in the constellation Pegasus. Planets like this one, which circle stars beyond our sun, are called exoplanets. The new finding follows the detection of these same organic molecules in the atmosphere of another hot, giant planet, called HD 189733b, by astronomers using Hubble and Spitzer data...