Skip to main content

Hubble Observes Exoplanet that Snows Sunscreen


This is an artist’s impression of the exoplanet Kepler-13Ab as compared in size to several of the planets in the Solar System. The behemoth exoplanet is six times more massive than Jupiter. Kepler-13Ab is also one of the hottest known planets, with a dayside temperature of about 2700 °C. It orbits very close to the star Kepler-13A, which lies at a distance of 1730 light-years from Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

Nighttime Titanium Oxide Snow Leaves Dayside Cloud-Free and Cooler


Travelers to the nightside of exoplanet Kepler-13Ab should pack an umbrella because they will be pelted with precipitation. But it's not the kind of watery precipitation that falls on Earth. On this alien world, the precipitation is in the form of sunscreen.

Ironically, the sunscreen (titanium oxide) is not needed on this side of the planet because it never receives any sunlight. But bottling up some sunlight protection is a good idea if travelers plan on visiting the sizzling hot, permanent dayside, which always faces its star. Visitors won't find any desperately needed sunscreen on this part of the planet.

Astronomers didn't detect the titanium oxide directly. They used Hubble to find that the atmospheric temperature grows increasingly colder with altitude on Kepler-13Ab, which was contrary to what they had expected. If titanium oxide were in the daytime atmosphere, it would absorb light and heat the upper atmosphere. Instead, high winds carry the titanium oxide around to the permanently dark side of the planet where it condenses to form clouds and precipitation. The planet's crushing gravity pulls all the titanium oxide so far down it can't be recycled back into the upper atmosphere on the daytime side.

The Hubble observations represent the first time astronomers have detected this precipitation process, called a "cold trap," on an exoplanet.

Kepler-13Ab is one of the hottest known planets, with a dayside temperature of nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The Kepler-13 system resides 1,730 light-years from Earth.

Credits

Artwork: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI) 
Science: NASA, ESA, and T. Beatty (Pennsylvania State University)

Resources

Hubble Observes Exoplanet that Snows Sunscreen 

Next Post


Scientists detect comets outside our solar system 

Etichette:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fermi Bubbles

Image: A giant gamma-ray structure was discovered in 2010 by processing Fermi all-sky data at energies from 1 to 10 billion electron volts, shown here. The dumbbell-shaped feature (center) emerges from the galactic center and extends 50 degrees north and south from the plane of the Milky Way, spanning the sky from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus. Credits: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT/D. Finkbeiner et al. At a time when our earliest human ancestors mastered walking upright the heart of our Milky Way galaxy underwent a titanic eruption, driving gases and other material outward at 2 million miles per hour.
Post a Comment
Read more

CONTAMINATION BY SUPERNOVAE IN GLOBULAR CLUSTERS

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Alexandra Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF) Only a small amount of the supernovae products remains trapped within globular clusters and this "catch" only occurs in the most massive cases (mass cluster ≥ 10^6 solar masses).
Post a Comment
Read more

Scientists detect comets outside our solar system

An artist’s conception of a view from within the Exocomet system KIC 3542116. Credit: Danielle Futselaar Team of professional and citizen scientists identifies tails of comets streaking past a distant star Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office Scientists from MIT and other institutions, working closely with amateur astronomers, have spotted the dusty tails of six exocomets — comets outside our solar system — orbiting a faint star 800 light years from Earth. These cosmic balls of ice and dust, which were about the size of Halley’s Comet and traveled about 100,000 miles per hour before they ultimately vaporized, are some of the smallest objects yet found outside our own solar system. The discovery marks the first time that an object as small as a comet has been detected using transit photometry, a technique by which astronomers observe a star’s light for telltale dips in intensity. Such dips signal potential transits, or crossings of planets or other objects in front of a star, ...
Post a Comment
Read more