Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2016 Mar 28
Observations of an extreme-weather planet raise questions about hot Jupiters’ origins.
[img3="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: JPL, J. de Wit et al)"]http://news.mit.edu/sites/mit.edu.newso ... here_0.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]For centuries, the solar system was viewed as a standard blueprint for planetary systems in the universe, with a star (our sun) at the center of a circular track, and a planet orbiting within each lane. Smaller, rockier planets fill the interior lanes, and larger gas giants orbit further out.
But over the last 20 years, more powerful telescopes have revealed, far from our solar system, a host of exotic systems with completely unexpected configurations. “Hot Jupiters,” for example, are massive “roaster” planets that circle scorchingly close to their stars. Scientists have puzzled over how these gas giants, which supposedly form far from their stars, end up on such blistering orbits.
Now an even weirder planetary system may render the puzzle more challenging. Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists from MIT, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and elsewhere have observed an exoplanet by the name of HD 80606 b. This planet is about the size of Jupiter, though four times as massive, and resides in a system 190 light years from Earth, in the constellation Ursa Major. ...
Direct Measure of Radiative and Dynamical Properties of an Exoplanet Atmosphere - Julien de Wit et al
- Astrophysical Journal Letters 820(2):L33 (2016 Apr 01) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8205/820/2/L33