Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

See the weather patterns on a wild, super hot exoplanet

By

When it comes to understanding exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, the big challenge is in not only finding these planets, but also understanding what they are like. And one of the biggest factors that scientists are interested in is whether an exoplanet has an atmosphere and, if so, what it is composed of. But, just like with weather here on Earth, exoplanet atmospheres aren’t static. So the Hubble Space Telescope was recently used for an intriguing observation — comparing data from an exoplanet atmosphere that had previously been observed, to see how it changed over time.

Hubble looked at planet WASP-121 b, an extreme planet that is so close to its star that a year there lasts just 30 hours. Its surface temperatures are over 3,000 Kelvins, or 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which researchers predict would lead to some wild weather phenomena. As it is such an extreme planet, WASP-121 b is well-known and has been observed by Hubble several times over the years, beginning in 2016.

This is an artist’s impression of the exoplanet WASP 121-b, also known as Tylos. The exoplanet’s appearance is based on Hubble data of the object. Using Hubble observations, another team of scientists had previously reported the detection of heavy metals such as magnesium and iron escaping from the upper atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter exoplanet, marking it as the first of such detection. The exoplanet is orbiting dangerously close to its host star, roughly 2.6% of the distance between Earth and the Sun, placing it on the verge of being ripped apart by its host star's tidal forces. The powerful gravitational forces have altered the planet's shape.
This is an artist’s impression of the exoplanet WASP 121-b, also known as Tylos. The exoplanet is orbiting dangerously close to its host star at roughly 2.6% of the distance between Earth and the Sun, placing it on the verge of being ripped apart by its host star’s tidal forces. The powerful gravitational forces have altered the planet’s shape. NASA, ESA, Q. Changeat et al., M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble)

In total, the researchers combined four sets of observations that were made using Hubble, processing each to get a picture of how the planet changed over the years. “Our dataset represents a significant amount of observing time for a single planet and is currently the only consistent set of such repeated observations,” said researcher Quentin Changeat of the Space Telescope Science Institute in a statement.

Recommended Videos

“The information that we extracted from those observations was used to characterize (infer the chemistry, temperature, and clouds) of the atmosphere of WASP-121 b at different times. This provided us with an exquisite picture of the planet, changing in time,” he said.

The researchers produced a stunning video showing the weather patterns they modeled on the planet. The footage was slowed down to show the patterns more clearly, and the results are thought to be due to huge cyclones in the planet’s atmosphere. These are created because one side of the planet always faces its star, so it gets much hotter than the side facing into space, and the huge temperature difference creates this dramatic weather.

WASP-121 b weather patterns (slowed)

Understanding more about the weather on this exoplanet can help scientists learn about weather on other planets, which will become more important as more observations are made of exoplanet atmospheres.

“Weather on Earth is responsible for many aspects of our life, and in fact, the long-term stability of Earth’s climate and its weather is likely the reason why life could emerge in the first place,” said Changeat. “Studying exoplanets’ weather is vital to understanding the complexity of exoplanet atmospheres, especially in our search for exoplanets with habitable conditions.”

The research will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Astronomers discover extremely hot exoplanet with ‘lava hemisphere’
Like Kepler-10 b, illustrated above, the exoplanet HD 63433 d is a small, rocky planet in a tight orbit of its star. HD 63433 d is the smallest confirmed exoplanet younger than 500 million years old. It's also the closest discovered Earth-sized planet this young, at about 400 million years old.

Astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet with an unusually extreme climate where one half of the planet is thought to be covered in lava. The planet HD 63433 d is tidally locked, meaning one side of it always faces its star while the other half always faces out into space, creating a huge difference in temperatures between the planet's two faces.

Like Kepler-10 b, illustrated above, the exoplanet HD 63433 d is a small, rocky planet in a tight orbit of its star. HD 63433 d is the smallest confirmed exoplanet younger than 500 million years old.  NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Read more
How astronomers used James Webb to detect methane in the atmosphere of an exoplanet
An artists rendering of a blue and white exoplanet known as WASP-80 b, set on a star-studded black background. Alternating horizontal layers of cloudy white, grey and blue cover the planets surface. To the right of the planet, a rendering of the chemical methane is depicted with four hydrogen atoms bonded to a central carbon atom, representing methane within the exoplanet's atmosphere. An artist’s rendering of the warm exoplanet WASP-80 b whose color may appear bluish to human eyes due to the lack of high-altitude clouds and the presence of atmospheric methane identified by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, similar to the planets Uranus and Neptune in our own solar system.

One of the amazing abilities of the James Webb Space Telescope is not just detecting the presence of far-off planets, but also being able to peer into their atmospheres to see what they are composed of. With previous telescopes, this was extremely difficult to do because they lacked the powerful instruments needed for this kind of analysis, but scientists using Webb recently announced they had made a rare detection of methane in an exoplanet atmosphere.

Scientists studied the planet WASP-80 b using Webb's NIRCam instrument, which is best known as a camera but also has a slitless spectroscopy mode which allows it to split incoming light into different wavelengths. By looking at which wavelengths are missing because they have been absorbed by the target, researchers can tell what an object -- in this case, a planetary atmosphere -- is composed of.

Read more
James Webb investigates a super puffy exoplanet where it rains sand
Artistic concept of the exoplanet WASP-107b and its parent star. Even though the rather cool host star emits a relatively small fraction of high-energy photons, they can reach deep into the planet’s fluffy atmosphere.

Exoplanets come in many forms, from dense, rocky planets like Earth and Mars to gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. But some planets discovered outside our solar system are even less dense than gas giants and are a type known informally as super-puff or cotton candy planets. One of the least dense exoplanets known, WASP-107b, was recently investigated using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the planet's weather seems to be as strange as its puffiness.

The planet is more atmosphere than core, with a fluffy atmosphere in which Webb spotted water vapor and sulfur dioxide. Strangest of all, Webb also saw silicate sand clouds, suggesting that it would rain sand between the upper and lower layers of the atmosphere. The planet is almost as big as Jupiter but has a tiny mass similar to that of Neptune.

Read more