Researchers have succeeded to map the atmosphere of an extremely windy exoplanet. The HD 189733b space object, which was found at more than 50 light years from us, has incredible speeds of winds that can get up to 4,500 mph. On Terra, this means that storms out there are a lot faster than the sound of speed measured at our planet’s parametric and physics conditions.
The outer solar climate report was released this week in the US astrophysical publications. It is a very hard thing to make a prediction for a world that is at 50 light years and scientists who created the virtual map think that they are the first specialist to evaluate and map the climate patters on planets that are outside of the solar system.
This exoplanet is a perfect focus for astronomers’ studies: besides being rather close to Earth, it is also a large big observational space object, around 10% bigger than Jupiter, the largest planet orbiting the Sun. It is also close to a star, which is an advantage due to the way in which we observe planets through the telescopes.
The findings made with modern telescopes when planets orbit around their stars show scientists everything they want to know about these space objects. Researchers can observe the fading light of the stars’ light waves and use these variations to map the characteristics of the planet that is orbiting it. Some will remember that a remote star’s uncommon blinking signals recently made a few wonder if it was a spaceship revolving around it.
A star’s glow can help astronomers look at the planets’ atmosphere. When a space object goes in front of a star, experts can study that the sun’s light waves as they are deflected by elements in the planet’s atmosphere. The wavelengths vary as the exoplanet orbits the star, in the same way that an alarm sounds different as it moves away from the listener. Decoding these modifications, which are proportional to the pace at which all objects are moving in space, permitted the scientists to determine the speed of wind on a remote planet.
A star is much brighter at its center than on the outside, so as an orbiting exoplanet goes right in front of it, the comparative percentage of light waves obstructed by different areas of the planet changes during the transition, as specialists said in their declaration. For the very first time, they have used this data to evaluate the speeds on opposite parts of the world individually, which offers them an accurate wind map.
Image source: Chapman.agu
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