Today's forecast: Sunny, with clouds rolling in overnight, highs of 3300 degrees and a
chance of….
silicate downpours??
Hi there fellow alien folk, Trace here for DNews.
Obviously, we're not talking about Earth with that forecast.
Instead, this is a possible weather forecast for distant “hot Jupiter” exoplanets,
according to new observations by NASA’s Kepler space telescope: we know the weather
on other planets!
"Hot Jupiters" are one of the most commonly found types of exoplanet.
Like Jupiter, they're these massive gas giants, but they orbit crazy close to their stars
-- making them, HOT.
Like really, REALLY hot.
As in as hot as a blow torch, hot.
Because they are so close to their stars, hot-Jupiters can orbit in less than 10 days.
This means they become “tidally locked” with their stars -- one hemisphere is always
facing the star in daylight, while the opposite is in constant night.
We know this, because of Kepler.
Not Johannes, the telescope named after him.
Kepler was launched in 2009 and is an an ace exoplanet hunter (even though it broke in
2013 and couldn’t move at all, but that’s another story).
When a planet passes in front of a star, it blocks a tiny amount of starlight, and the
space telescope measures the amount and timing of that dimming and can then extrapolate the
size and orbital period of the passing planet -- this is called a “transit.”
We have whole videos about it.
But, Kepler doesn’t only detect the dimming starlight of exoplanets; it can also detect
the light reflecting off exoplanets and see the glow of their heated atmospheres!
This adds a whole new dimension to the study of these extrasolar planets!
Now we can get to know their weather.
In a new study published recently in The Astrophysical Journal, astronomers were able to measure
the amount of light being reflected from these hot-Jupiters as they orbit their stars.
Using the glow of the heated atmosphere, the paper details how many clouds there are, what
chemicals those clouds are made of, AND even where those clouds appear in the sky!
Depending on the chemical composition of the exoplanet, the clouds could be in different
places or have different colors, and for the hottest “hot-Jupiters”, the atmosphere
would glow like the embers of a fire after the hellish heating from the exoplanet’s
star!
You can see the full range on the different exoplanet temperatures and chemical compositions
here.
Space is so awesome!
The researchers could even tell what the rain on the planet would be like -- which is definitely
alien -- for example, some of these exoplanets could drizzle silicate crystals.
Basically, certain chemicals in the atmosphere condense and “rain out," just like water
would here on our planet.
Obviously these planets are hundreds of light-years away, so Kepler can't resolve tiny features
like "exo-clouds" DIRECTLY.
Instead, the researchers used Kepler’s observation and combined that with models for weather
and climate cycles here on Earth!
They used this to create models for the possible weather conditions in alien atmospheres.
A similar study published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy learned that another
hot-Jupiter has clouds of the mineral corundum; corundum forms rubies and sapphires here on
Earth.
Can you imagine how beautiful those clouds would appear from orbit?!
Look, understanding the weather on massive, hellishly-hot worlds hundreds of light-years
away may not seem super important, but revealing the weather systems on these hot-Jupiters
adds another level of understanding about the rich diversity of alien atmospheres out
there.
And, as astronomical techniques become more sophisticated, it seems likely that we will
one day be able to study the weather systems on nearby Earth-sized exoplanets, perhaps
revealing just how habitable these places could be for alien life.
I say again, space is so.
AWESOME.
Hot-Jupiters sound pretty terrifying, but they’re actually not the worst.To learn
more about these crazy planets, check out our terrifying video on exoplanets here.
But how do you think these space meteorologist fare in comparison to your local meteorologist?
Tell us about it in the comments, make sure you subscribe for more DNews and thanks for
watching.