weather systems tagged posts

This is an artist’s impression of planet HAT-P-7b. CREDIT University of Warwick/Mark Garlick

Signs of powerful changing winds have been detected on a planet 16 times larger than Earth, over 1,000 light years away – the first time ever that weather systems have been found on a gas giant outside our solar system. David Armstrong in Warwick’s Astrophysics Group has discovered that the gas giant HAT-P-7b is affected by large scale changes in the strong winds moving across the planet, likely leading to catastrophic storms.

This discovery was made by monitoring the light being reflected from the atmosphere of HAT-P-7b, and identifying changes in this light, showing that the brightest point of the planet shifts its position...