Friday, January 30th, 2009

Heating Up on a Distant Planet

The planet HD80606b glows orange from its own heat in this computer-generated image. A massive storm has formed in response to the pulse of heat delivered during the planet's close swing past its star. The blue crescent is reflected light from the star Image by D. Kasen, J. Langton, and G. Laughlin (UCSC).

Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet that experiences temperature swings of as much as 700 degrees within a matter of hours -- and are working to model the weather patterns there. Writing in the journal Nature, a team of astronomers describe the unusual behavior of planet HD80606b. The planet has an extremely irregular orbit. Most of the time, its distance from its sun is comparable to the distance of Earth and Venus from our own sun. Every 111 days, however, it makes a very close encounter with its sun, passing just a few million miles away. During that flyby, the radiation hitting the atmosphere of the gas giant increases by over 800fold. That rapid burst of heat results in massive storms, wind gusts measured in the thousands of miles per hour, and skies glowing red. We'll find out more.