Hot Jupiters tagged posts

Hot Jupiters, exoplanets around the same size as Jupiter that orbit very closely to their stars, often have cloud or haze layers in their atmospheres. This may prevent space telescopes from detecting atmospheric water that lies beneath the clouds, according to a study in the Astrophysical Journal. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Water is a hot topic in the study of exoplanets, including “hot Jupiters,” whose masses are similar to that of Jupiter, but which are much closer to their parent star than Jupiter is to the sun. They can reach a scorching 2,000F, meaning any water they host would take the form of water vapor. Astronomers have found many hot Jupiters with water in their atmospheres, but others appear to have none...

Artist’s impression of the ten hot Jupiter exoplanets studied by David Sing and his colleagues. From top left to to lower left these planets are WASP-12b, WASP-6b, WASP-31b, WASP-39b, HD 189733b, HAT-P-12b, WASP-17b, WASP-19b, HAT-P-1b and HD 209458b. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Astronomers have used Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescope to study the atmospheres of 10 hot, Jupiter-sized exoplanets in detail, the largest number of such planets ever studied. The team was able to discover why some of these worlds seem to have less water than expected—a long-standing mystery.

To date, astronomers have discovered nearly 2000 planets orbiting other stars. Some are known as hot Jupiters, hot, gaseous planets with characteristics similar to those of Jupiter...

IMAGE1: HD189733: The planet HD 189733b is shown here in front of its parent star. A belt of wind around the equator of the planet travels at 5400mph from the heated day side to the night side. The day side of the planet appears blue due to scattering of light from silicate haze in the atmosphere. The night side of the planet glows a deep red due to its high temperature.
Credit: Mark A. Garlick/University of Warwick

The University of Warwick discovery is the first time that a weather system on a planet outside of Earth’s solar system has been directly measured and mapped. The wind speed recorded is 20x greater than the fastest ever known on earth, where it would be 7x the speed of sound.

Tom Louden, of the University of Warwick’s Astrophysics group, said: “This is the first ever weather map...