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UCF, UCLA astronomers first to measure night and day on extrasolar planet
October 13, 2006Observations hold promise for future studies of other extrasolar planets
University of Central Florida Astronomy professor Joseph Harrington and University of California at Los Angeles professor Brad M. Hansen and their team have made the first direct observation of distinct day and night temperatures on a planet orbiting another star.
The team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to measure the infrared light emitted by the planet upsilon Andromedae b at five points around its orbit. The planet orbits a star located 263 trillion miles from Earth in the constellation Andromeda.
At each point during the observations, different portions of the planet's day and night hemispheres were in view, creating a rise-and-fall pattern in the light level that was synchronized with the planet's known orbit.
This information helps planetary scientists choose among several competing hypotheses regarding weather on so-called "hot Jupiter" planets, which orbit very close to their stars. Temperatures on these planets are about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, Harrington and Hansen calculated. Hot Jupiters have small enough orbits that the energy they absorb and reradiate from their host stars dominates their own internal energy losses.
"How they absorb and reradiate this energy is fundamental to understanding the behavior of their atmospheres," Harrington and Hansen said in their published article. "Studying planetary atmospheres under such exotic conditions puts terrestrial and solar-system meteorology into a universal context, which aids in our understanding of weather on all planets," Harrington added.
A number of models predict that strong winds transport energy from the day side to the night side. "But, our points are almost exactly synced up with the known orbit, which indicates almost immediate reradiation of energy, very little energy transport," Harrington said. "That's new, and very exciting. The temperature difference between day and night is also very strong, which is more evidence for immediate reradiation."
Why don't the models work for upsilon Andromedae b? "That's going to be a hot topic now," Harrington said.
Since the first planet orbiting another sun-like star was discovered in 1995, more than 200 such planets have been found, but scientists still cannot see the planets as separate images from their stars.
"In the past, we could only directly measure planets that happened to pass in front of and behind their stars from our point of view," Harrington said. "That only works for certain planets, and only at two points in the orbit. Our new method doesn't have those limitations, which opens up opportunities to observe more planets, and to get data all around their orbits. We need that to learn how their atmospheres work."
So when will someone discover an Earth-like planet around a sun-like star with a temperature that could support life as we know it? "It may not be that long of a wait," Harrington said. "NASA's Kepler mission should find several such planets, but technology is moving so fast, it could be that someone else does it first." The unmanned Kepler mission is scheduled for launch in October 2008.
University of Central Florida
Extrasolar Planet Current Events and Extrasolar Planet News RSSCaltech scientists predict greater longevity for planets with life
Roughly a billion years from now, the ever-increasing radiation from the sun will have heated Earth into inhabitability; the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that serves as food for plant life will disappear, pulled out by the weathering of rocks; the oceans will evaporate; and all living things will disappear.
NASA/University team develops new method to find alien oceans
NASA-sponsored scientists looking back at Earth with the Deep Impact/EPOXI mission have developed a method to indicate whether Earth-like alien (extrasolar) worlds have oceans.
New technique could find water on Earth-like planets orbiting distant suns
Since the early 1990s astronomers have discovered more than 300 planets orbiting stars other than our sun, nearly all of them gas giants like Jupiter.
Missing planets attest to destructive power of stars' tides
During the last two decades, astronomers have found hundreds of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. New research indicates they might have found even more except for one thing - some planets have fallen into their stars and simply no longer exist.
Finding Twin Earths: Harder Than We Thought!
Does a twin Earth exist somewhere in our galaxy? Astronomers are getting closer and closer to finding an Earth-sized planet in an Earth-like orbit. NASA's Kepler spacecraft just launched to find such worlds.
European team finds smallest transiting extrasolar planet ever
The CoRoT satellite has discovered a planet only twice as large as the Earth orbiting a star slightly smaller than the Sun. It is the smallest extrasolar planet (planet outside our solar system) whose radius has ever been measured.
Hubble finds carbon dioxide on an extrasolar planet
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star.
Hubble finds first organic molecule on extrasolar planet
The tell-tale signature of the molecule methane in the atmosphere of the Jupiter-sized extrasolar planet HD 189733b has been found with the Hubble Space Telescope. Under the right circumstances methane can play a key role in prebiotic chemistry - the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life as we know it.
Deep Impact extended mission heads for comet Hartley 2
NASA has given a University of Maryland-led team of scientists the green light to fly the Deep Impact spacecraft to Comet Hartley 2 on a two-part extended mission known as EPOXI. The spacecraft will fly by Earth on New Year's Eve at the beginning of a more than two-and-a-half-year journey to Hartley 2.
Hazy red sunset on extrasolar planet
A team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to detect, for the first time, strong evidence of hazes in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star. The discovery comes after extensive observations made recently with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
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