WASP-121b tagged posts

The planet’s night side likely hosts iron clouds, titanium rain, and winds that dwarf Earth’s jetstream. MIT astronomers have obtained the clearest view yet of the perpetual dark side of an exoplanet that is “tidally locked” to its star. Their observations, combined with measurements of the planet’s permanent day side, provide the first detailed view of an exoplanet’s global atmosphere.

“We’re now moving beyond taking isolated snapshots of specific regions of exoplanet atmospheres, to study them as the 3D systems they truly are,” says Thomas Mikal-Evans, who led the study as a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

The planet at the center of the new study, which appears...

How can a planet be “hotter than hot?” The answer is when heavy metals are detected escaping from the planet’s atmosphere, instead of condensing into clouds.

Observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveal magnesium and iron gas streaming from the strange world outside our solar system known as WASP-121b...

Researchers have found that a “hot Jupiter” exoplanet named WASP-121b (left) has a stratosphere hot enough to boil iron. The planet is as close to its host star (right) as possible without the star’s gravity ripping the planet apart. Credit: Engine House VFX, At-Bristol Science Centre, University of Exeter

Distant ‘hot Jupiter’ has a stratosphere hot enough to boil iron. Scientists have found compelling evidence for a stratosphere on an enormous planet outside our solar system. The planet’s stratosphere – a layer of atmosphere where temperature increases with higher altitudes – is hot enough to boil iron. WASP-121b, located ~900 light years from Earth, is a gas giant exoplanet commonly referred to as a “hot Jupiter.”

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Exeter wit...