McGill: A 'Hot Jupiter' with Unusual Winds

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McGill: A 'Hot Jupiter' with Unusual Winds

Post by bystander » Tue Jan 23, 2018 5:23 pm

A 'Hot Jupiter' with Unusual Winds
McGill University | 2018 Jan 22

Puzzling finding raises new questions about atmospheric physics of giant planets
[img3="Artist’s concept shows the gaseous exoplanet CoRoT-2b with a westward hot spot in orbit around its host star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (IPAC)"]https://mcgill.ca/newsroom/files/newsro ... e_2018.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]
The hottest point on a gaseous planet near a distant star isn’t where astrophysicists expected it to be -- a discovery that challenges scientists’ understanding of the many planets of this type found in solar systems outside our own.

Unlike our familiar planet Jupiter, so-called hot Jupiters circle astonishingly close to their host star -- so close that it typically takes fewer than three days to complete an orbit. And one hemisphere of these planets always faces its host star, while the other faces permanently out into the dark.

Not surprisingly, the “day” side of the planets gets vastly hotter than the night side, and the hottest point of all tends to be the spot closest to the star. Astrophysicists theorize and observe that these planets also experience strong winds blowing eastward near their equators, which can sometimes displace the hot spot toward the east.

In the mysterious case of exoplanet CoRoT-2b, however, the hot spot turns out to lie in the opposite direction: west of center. A research team led by astronomers at McGill University’s McGill Space Institute (MSI) and the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) in Montreal made the discovery using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. ...

Detection of a Westward Hotspot Offset in the Atmosphere of Hot Gas Giant CoRoT-2b - Lisa Dang - et al
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