NASA | JPL-Caltech | Spitzer Space Telescope | 2016 Mar 30
[c][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nphopMD7mTs[/youtube]Possible Lava World (Animation) - Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech[/c][hr][/hr]Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have led to the first temperature map of a super-Earth planet -- a rocky planet nearly two times as big as ours. The map reveals extreme temperature swings from one side of the planet to the other, and hints that a possible reason for this is the presence of lava flows. ...
Spitzer stared at the planet with its infrared vision for a total of 80 hours, watching it orbit all the way around its star multiple times. These data allowed scientists to map temperature changes across the entire planet. To their surprise, they found a dramatic temperature difference of 2340 degrees Fahrenheit (1,300 Kelvin) from one side of the planet to the other. The hottest side is nearly 4,400 degrees Fahrenheit (2,700 Kelvin), and the coolest is 2,060 degrees Fahrenheit (1,400 Kelvin).
The fact Spitzer found the night side to be significantly colder than the day side means heat is not being distributed around the planet very well. The data argues against the notion that a thick atmosphere and winds are moving heat around the planet as previously thought. Instead, the findings suggest a planet devoid of a massive atmosphere, and possibly hint at a lava world where the lava would become hardened on the night side and unable to transport heat. ...
A map of the large day–night temperature gradient of a super-Earth exoplanet - Brice Olivier Demory et al
- Nature (online 30 Mar 2016) DOI: 10.1038/nature17169
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