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posted by mrpg on Monday September 25 2017, @09:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the black-hot dept.

NASA has found that a gas giant exoplanet discovered in 2008 traps around 94% of the visible light that hits its atmosphere:

The oddball exoplanet, called WASP-12b, is one of a class of so-called "hot Jupiters," gigantic, gaseous planets that orbit very close to their host star and are heated to extreme temperatures. The planet's atmosphere is so hot that most molecules are unable to survive on the blistering day side of the planet, where the temperature is 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Therefore, clouds probably cannot form to reflect light back into space. Instead, incoming light penetrates deep into the planet's atmosphere where it is absorbed by hydrogen atoms and converted to heat energy.

"We did not expect to find such a dark exoplanet," said Taylor Bell of McGill University and the Institute for Research on Exoplanets in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, lead researcher of the Hubble study. "Most hot Jupiters reflect about 40 percent of starlight."

But the planet's nighttime side is a different story. WASP-12b has a fixed day side and night side because it orbits so close to the star that it is tidally locked. The nighttime side is more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit cooler, which allows water vapor and clouds to form. Previous Hubble observations of the day/night boundary detected evidence of water vapor and possibly clouds and hazes in the atmosphere. WASP-12b is about 2 million miles away from its star and completes an orbit once a day.

"This new Hubble research further demonstrates the vast diversity among the strange population of hot Jupiters," Bell said. "You can have planets like WASP-12b that are 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit and some that are 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, and they're both called hot Jupiters. Past observations of hot Jupiters indicate that the temperature difference between the day and night sides of the planet increases with hotter day sides. This previous research suggests that more heat is being pumped into the day side of the planet, but the processes, such as winds, that carry the heat to the night side of the planet don't keep up the pace."

Also at Science Magazine, which managed to list temperatures in Celsius in its blurb about the exoplanet.

WASP-12b (and check out the file history for this image).

The Very Low Albedo of WASP-12b from Spectral Eclipse Observations with Hubble (DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aa876c) (DX)


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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday September 26 2017, @07:34PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday September 26 2017, @07:34PM (#573429)

    > which managed to list temperatures in Celsius in its blurb about the exoplanet.

    I didn't immediately realize TFS's extract, using non-SI, was from NASA.

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