Sizzling Worlds evaporate most of the dust into their atmosphere
“When you are hot, you are hot!” Country singer Jerry Reed on a 1971 pop song. Hubble astronomers may change lyrics to: “When you’re hot, you’re very hot!” This comes from the study of planets that are so precariously close to their parent star that are baked at temperatures boiling above 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It is raining steamed rock on one planet and the atmosphere of another planet is “burned” by the intense ultraviolet radiation from its star. This makes the upper atmosphere warmer than cooler. This Hubble study provides dramatic new insights into the vast range of atmospheric conditions in other worlds and helps astronomers develop better theories to become “exoplanet weather forecasters.” Before thousands of planets were discovered around other stars, astronomers limited themselves to comparative planetology in just a few worlds of our solar system. As strange as super-hot Jupiter is, this kind of research helps pave the way for a better understanding of the atmosphere of colder exoplanets, especially potentially habitable terrestrial planets. Jupiter super hot is uninhabitable, of course, and every visitor should wear SPF 10,000 sunscreen.
Hubble Detectors Extreme weather on extremely hot Jupiter
Studying a unique class of extremely hot exoplanets, astronomers at NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope may be in the mood to dance to the Calypso party song “Hot, Hot, Hot.” This is because these inflated Jupiter-sized worlds are so precariously close to their parent star that they bake at temperatures boiling above 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It is hot enough to evaporate most metals, including titanium. They have the hottest planetary atmospheres they have ever seen. In two new posts, Hubble astronomers report strange weather conditions in these shocking worlds. It is raining steam on a rock on one planet and on another its upper atmosphere becomes hotter than colder because it is “burned” by intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation from its star. This research goes beyond simply finding strange and bizarre atmospheric planets. The study of extreme weather conditions gives astronomers a better understanding of the diversity, complexity and exotic chemistry that takes place in distant worlds in our galaxy. “We do not yet have a good understanding of the weather in different planetary environments,” said David Singh of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, co-author of the two studies. “When you look at the Earth, all our weather forecasts are still well tuned to what we can measure. But when you go to a distant exoplanet, you have limited predictive powers because you have not developed a general theory of how everything in an atmosphere goes together and responds to extreme conditions. “Even though you know basic chemistry and physics, you do not know how it will manifest in complex ways.” In an article in the April 6 issue of Nature, astronomers describe Hubble observations of WASP-178b, about 1,300 light-years away. On the day side the atmosphere is cloudless and is enriched with silicon gas. Because one side of the planet is permanently facing its star, the horrible atmosphere beats on the night side with super-hurricane speeds in excess of 2,000 miles per hour. On the dark side, silicon monoxide can be cold enough to condense on a rock that’s raining clouds, but even at dawn and dusk, the planet is hot enough to evaporate the rocks. “We knew we had seen something really interesting about this feature of silicon monoxide,” said Josh Lothringer of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. In an article published in the Jan. 24 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Guangwei Fu of the University of Maryland College College referred to a superheated Jupiter, KELT-20b, about 400 light-years away. On this planet, an explosion of ultraviolet light from its parent star creates a thermal layer in the atmosphere, like the Earth’s stratosphere. “Until now we never knew how the host star directly affected the atmosphere of a planet. “There have been many theories, but now we have the first observational data,” Fu said. By comparison, on Earth, ozone in the atmosphere absorbs ultraviolet light and raises temperatures in a layer seven to 31 miles above the Earth’s surface. In KELT-20b the ultraviolet radiation from the star heats metals in the atmosphere, which creates a very strong layer of thermal reversal. The data came from Hubble water detection in near-infrared observations and carbon monoxide detection from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. They radiate through the hot, transparent upper atmosphere produced by the inversion layer. This signature is unique from what astronomers see in the atmospheres of hot-Jupiter orbiting colder stars such as the Sun. “The emission spectrum for KELT-20b is quite different from other hot Jupiter,” Fu said. “This is irresistible proof that the planets do not live in isolation but are influenced by the star that hosts them.” Although the super-warm Jupiter is uninhabitable, this kind of research helps pave the way for a better understanding of the atmosphere of potentially habitable terrestrial planets. “If we can not understand what is happening on super-hot Jupiter, where we have reliable solid observational data, we will not be able to understand what is happening on weaker spectra than observing terrestrial exoplanets,” Lothringer said. “This is a test of our techniques that allows us to build a general understanding of physical properties such as cloud formation and atmospheric structure.” Bibliographical references: “UV absorption by silicate cloud precursors in ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-178b” by Joshua D. Lothringer, David K. Sing, Zafar Rustamkulov, Hannah R. Wakeford, Kevin B. Stevenson, Nikolay Nikolov, Panayotis Lavvas, Jessica J. Spake . and Autumn T. Winch, April 6, 2022, Nature.DOI: 10.1038 / s41586-022-04453-2 “Strong H2O and CO Emission Features in the Spectrum of KELT-20b Driven by Stellar UV Radiation” by Guangwei Fu, David K. Sing, Joshua D. Lothringer, Drake Deming, Jegug Ih, Eliza M. -R. Kempton, Matej Malik, Thaddeus D. Komacek, Megan Mansfield and Jacob L. Bean, January 24, 2022, Astrophysical Journal Letters.DOI: 10.3847 / 2041-8213 / ac4968 The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland operates the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble Science operations. STScI operates for NASA from the Association of Universities for Astronomy Research in Washington, DC
