First Map of an Extrasolar Planet

jiawen writes "Data from the Spitzer Space Telescope has been used by researchers to make the first-ever map of an extrasolar planet. It's a weather map, more precisely, showing temperature variations over the surface of a Hot Jupiter. It really is hot: even the coldest regions are about 1200 degrees F."

Comments

but can I view it

[froggero1]

on google maps?

Re:but can I view it

[notabaggins]

(Checking for press release announcing Google Space)

Re:but can I view it

[Lijemo]

"(Checking for press release announcing Google Space)"

http://mars.google.com/

http://moon.google.com/

I really, really hope that they do add exoplanets.google.com to this list. (or even just other planets/moons within our own solar system...)

Re:but can I view it

[H3g3m0n]

Its not exactly a real map, its just a really basic heat map, having the ability to zoom in and such isn't really going to be much of an improvement over viewing the jpeg http://ipac.jpl.nasa.gov/media_images/ssc2007-09a_ medium.jpg Even if it was more than a heat map. the planet doesn't even have anything mappable, its a gas giant so its continuously changing (although maybe there would be some more permanent features like the great red spot on Jupiter). I imagine the Google landmarks for it would consist of "(A) The hot bit.", at leas on Mars and the Moon there are some craters etc... Having other planets on Google maps would be nice, but there aren't any maps of any of them yet :(

Re:but can I view it

[Lijemo]

Well, a temperature map is still a map =^) Jupiter.google.com, for instance, could show prevailing wind directions, approximate boundaries of bands between different atmospheric or meteorological compositions, etc. I read that the winds on that exoplanet are killer, too keep the temperature as close to evenly distributed as it is. (Haven't read TFA, but I saw a newstory about it someplace else on Friday.)

Re:but can I view it

[PPH]

...on The Weather Channel?

1200 degrees F?

[PontifexPrimus]

So, how much is that in real temperature? Like, 35 degrees C or something?

Re:1200 degrees F?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only real temperature is Kelvin (which admittetly is based on Celcius which makes a lot more sense than the screwed-up Fahrenheit scale imho :)
1 200 degrees Fahrenheit = 922.038889 kelvin

Re:1200 degrees F?

[EachLennyAPenny]

Well, if you'd bother to read TFA you would find out: 930 degrees Celsius.

Re:1200 degrees F?

[Delta-NC]

I think it's more like 36.4

Re:1200 degrees F?

[Andrew Kismet]

http://www.google.com/search?q=1200F+in+C

1200 degrees Fahrenheit = 648.888889 degrees Celsius

Re:1200 degrees F?

[Timesprout]

Or factor 2,976,243,345 for those of you with red hair.

Re:1200 degrees F?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Minimum 973 K +/- 33 K
Maximum 1211 K +/- 11 K

That's 1751 +/-59 R and 2171 +/-20 R, for you non SI types. Subtract 459 degrees to get Fahrenheit.

Re:1200 degrees F?

[sm62704]

Tired of winter? Visit beautiful tropical HD 189733b and bask in the sun; er, star. The sunsets; er, starsets, are gorgeous!

And the sunset; er, starset lasts all day long since one side always faces the sun; er, star.

And at only 63 light years away in the constellation Vulpecula you can be home by dinner! Well, by dinner 120 years from now at half the speed of light (our star cruisers' speed).

Get your ticket today! Only $9869854649868766987676786397862976279323099883836 2746333000990374623746328929928171783847.00 USD!

Re:1200 degrees F?

[ByteSlicer]

With that factor you'd end up with no hair :P

Re:1200 degrees F?

[Wicked Zen]

Cosmo-tology humor? :P

Re:1200 degrees F?

[IdleTime]

I'll take 2 tickets!

Can I pay with the AmEx card i got from a russian I met online?

Re:1200 degrees F?

[Lijemo]

To be fair, the original point of F was to be a temperature scale that you could calibrate yourself, which made a lot of sense for scientific-types back before you could buy an accurately pre-calibrated thermometer in any dime store.

The idea was that 0-degrees was ice-water (e.g. the temperature where water can exist simultaneously as a liquid and a solid. The freezing temperature of water is actually lower than this, and plain old h20-ice can get a lot colder than the freezing temperature.) and 100-degrees was body-temperature (which Mr. Fahrenheit got wrong by about 2-degrees.)

Granted, that doesn't leave any reason (other than habit) where it should still be in use today, since Celsius makes a lot more conceptual sense, and pre-calibrated thermometers are no longer hard to come by.

Re:1200 degrees F?

[teh kurisu]

I disagree. For weather purposes, having the freezing point of water at 0 is more useful, both because freezing temperatures make a substantial difference to human behaviour, and because it is the same worldwide. I live in what would be described as a temperate area, and temperatures here have never reached 100F and rarely dip as low as 0F, so the Fahrenheit scale is less useful.

Re:1200 degrees F?

[zippthorne]

Reminds me of an old joke:

"The interior is 50 million degrees."
"What scale?" ...
"Does it matter?"

Re:1200 degrees F?

[eonlabs]

It's hot enough that typical glass starts to ooze. Much hotter than that (1600-2000) and you reach typical hot shop temperatures where glass blowing is done.

Re:1200 degrees F?

[StikyPad]

the Fahrenheit scale is less useful.

Actually, the degree of seperation between units Fahrenheit allows for greater precision, which is nice. Of course, you could just add a decimal to the celsius temp, but nobody ever does, especially the digital thermostat manufacturers.

Anyway, I don't know what your teacher told you, but Fahrenheit and celsius are both based on -D8.

Re:1200 degrees F?

[sm62704]

Sure, we'll even take the cash you got from that African lady!

Re:1200 degrees F?

[Capsaicin]

So, how much is that in real temperature? Like, 35 degrees C or something?

You know I thought the same thing (I mean this is supposed to be science reporting), but then I figured that by the time you got to 1200, it just had to be above body temperature!

Re:1200 degrees F?

[elrous0]

You damn kids are ALL wrong. When I was a kid, we measured OUR degrees by the hogshead. AND WE LIKED IT!

Re:1200 degrees F?

[mr_matticus]

0C and 32F are the same everywhere, too. A freezing point is a freezing point.

I think what parent was trying to say is that the Fahrenheit scale offers a better range of values for people to grasp. You are less likely to need negative numbers (which leads to confusion if the negative sign is missed), and the greater separation is more intuitive for people (1 degree C is nearly 3 degrees F throughout much of the "temperate" band).

Why, for example, should temperatures vary between 5 and 35 instead of 40 and 95? Both are arbitrary, but in casual use, avoiding things like negatives and decimals is arguably better for communication, and expanding the scale allows for easier expression and the average person is just faster at dealing with integers than with decimals (why, I don't know, since they're not complicated).

Re:1200 degrees F?

[teh kurisu]

0C and 32F are the same everywhere, too. A freezing point is a freezing point.

Erm, okay, I think you're confusing a couple of issues. My point was that the 0-100F that one person in one part of the world would find intuitive isn't necessarily intuitive to someone in another part of the world, with different climatic conditions. However, having a non-arbitrary number (0) at the freezing point of water is more useful because, as you said, the freezing point is the same everywhere.

...the greater separation is more intuitive for people...

I'd contest this. The greater separation is more intuitive to people that have used Fahrenheit all their lives. To someone that has used Celsius all their life, it's baffling.

Greater separation doesn't do anything for the average person. I would be surprised if anybody could tell the difference between 15C and 16C. Accordingly, decimals are never used in the Celsius scale outside of scientific applications, so this isn't an issue either.

Re:1200 degrees F?

[mr_matticus]

I'd contest this. The greater separation is more intuitive to people that have used Fahrenheit all their lives. To someone that has used Celsius all their life, it's baffling. I disagree. Having had the mixed blessing of childhood experiences in multiple countries (using both systems), I can say quite strongly that "21 is too cold; 22 is too warm" was a common complaint in the summers. In the US, you can set that temperature to 71 and get exactly what you want. If you have a digital Celsius thermostat (as I did in Vancouver), you can't regulate your temperature except in increments that are ~2.5 times the size of Fahrenheit units.

I'd say that people can certainly feel a 3-degree (F) difference in room temperature. 1 degree (F) is pushing it, but I certainly can tell the difference between 70 and 72 and so can just about everyone else I've ever lived with. The Celsius scale in integers just isn't sensitive enough in the temperate band, unless, of course, Americans are just more picky about temperature than everyone else.

I'm not contesting the clear advantages of the Celsius scale for science and for intuitive mathematical use. I'm simply saying that a Fahrenheit degree is a more intuitive unit for the narrow temperate band where people deal most with temperature (climate and cooking). 0-100F is irrelevant as "climatic (sic) experience"--it simply covers a range of temperatures likely to be experienced, avoiding negatives and scale-crowding. It has nothing to do with any mythical location that varies between those limits. It is no more or less arbitrary than a scale using the boiling and freezing points of water as those bounds. The Fahrenheit scale is more in line with human experience; the Celsius scale is more in line with logical scientific delineation.

'0 to 100F' is '-18 to 38 C.' If you're talking about the weather, which one is more arbitrary? Celsius. If you're cooking (particularly candymaking) and need to heat something to exactly 234F (soft ball stage), you can do that much more easily than scrambling to find 112.2C on the dial. Unless you have high-accuracy, science-grade equipment in your kitchen, cooking in Celsius is a trickier business because of those decimals. When talking about air temperature, why does it make sense to use negative numbers just because you've crossed the freezing point of water? It just makes the math slower for no reason to go from -17 to +17.

All you've demonstrated is that you're used to Celsius and parent (now GP?) is used to Fahrenheit. I grew up with both and I'm telling you that Celsius is not intuitive for weather and Fahrenheit is not intuitive for science. It's also not intuitive to use different scales for different reasons, so there's no simple answer, except maybe to use Kelvin for everything.

Interesting in a way i suppose

[Timesprout]

but seriously. It orbits very close to its sun so is anyone surprised the damn thing is really hot?

Re:Interesting in a way i suppose

[radtea]

but seriously. It orbits very close to its sun so is anyone surprised the damn thing is really hot?

The interesting science is how the temperature is distributed, not that it is really hot. The planet is almost certainly tidally locked, so one side faces the star all the time. However, the hottest part of the planet is not at the "high noon" position on the "surface" (which for some reason is what the article calls the cloud-tops).

The highest temperature region is about 30 degrees (angle, not temperature!) away from high noon. This, plus the relatively small temperature difference between the light hemisphere and dark hemisphere tell us that the planetary atmosphere is subject to extremely high winds, which are distributing the heat.

This is a fascinating way of probing the dynamics of planetary atmospheres under extreme conditions.

Amazing that this is possible at all

[Phrogman]

It doesn't seem all that long ago that scientists were merely *inferring* the presence of planets in other solar systems, now we are able to derive a map of one from IR data? Thats an amazing amount of progress for so short a time period. It would be interesting to know how far away this system is, and how large the planet is. If that data was in the article I seem to have missed it...

Re:Amazing that this is possible at all

[Jugalator]

Yes, it's the most interesting area of space exploration now, and imagine where we'll be if the Kepler mission is successful and don't get further pushed ahead in time by budget cuts.

Re:Amazing that this is possible at all

[jdagius]

I don't think it's that amazing. I think all they're doing is logging the brightness of the disk while it rotates around the sun, not actually resolving surface features. So, the 'hot spot' represents the side of the planet of the planet always facing the sun, so as it revolves around the star you see all sides, but the hot side reads out a higher intensity. The poles are pointed away from the earth so the apparent hot spot is seen best at the equator. Think of it as heat glare. We not really seeing any surface features at all, since this phenomenon would occur even if the planet was completely homogenized, heat-proof green cheese. That's my theory anyway, correct me if I'm wrong. :-)

Re:Amazing that this is possible at all

[tehspuddy]

The Wikipedia page on HD 189733B has some useful info.

Re:Amazing that this is possible at all

[notabaggins]

It doesn't seem all that long ago that scientists were merely *inferring* the presence of planets in other solar systems, now we are able to derive a map of one from IR data? Thats an amazing amount of progress for so short a time period.

More than that, it hasn't been all that long since we were debating how common extra-solar planets might be as we had no data at all. For that matter, it's been all of 77 years since the discovery of Pluto, roughly the range of a human lifespan.

Maybe it's me but, some days, you just have to sit back and think... wow...

Re:Amazing that this is possible at all

[jd]

Once the square kilometer array has been constructed, we will be able to get maps of this level of detail on Earth-sized planets at 1 AU from its sun at distances of around 50 light-years or so. If they made it a square mile, they could do the same at a distance of 100 light-years.

Oh, one small correction. We'd be able to get continuous maps. In other words, you'd be able to see temperature (and atmosphere composition) changes over time.

(At that point, something like SETI would get potentially much less of an intragalactic lottery and be much more interesting.)

I honestly don't know what resolution the NASA folks are working at, but the image presented is almost certainly some form of interpolation from available data, as even a super-Jovian planet is far too small to get more than a pixel or two resolution at any distance. I don't quite know what they're calculating, rather than directly observing, but there is simply no way they're getting that kind of resolution with direct measurement. Not of a planet.

There's nothing wrong with mathematical techniques, and if they're as good as they seem to be, then obviously the square kilometer array will be able to resolve Earth-sized planets at greater resolution than initially expected. Which is good, so long as the methods applied are valid.

(Let's face it - if anyone quibbles with these results, who do you think NASA would send over there to personally check? The person getting fame and glory for the organisation, or the person who is spoiling the party?)

Re:Amazing that this is possible at all

[bill_mcgonigle]

(At that point, something like SETI would get potentially much less of an intragalactic lottery and be much more interesting.)

Just don't tell anybody this is SETI (common noun) before the funding gets approved. The sibling-rivalry about ETI is insane.

Get the paper here

[Ambitwistor]

You can read a preprint of the published paper for free. (The published version is here, but full text access requires a Nature subscription.)

For all the non-americans, those temperatures...

[ricky-road-flats]

The warmest spot is 927 C, on the equivalent of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, and the coolest region is 'only' 649 C.

Good work Data.

[Nibbler999]

Data from the Spitzer Space Telescope has been used by researchers to make the first-ever map of an extrasolar planet

Data's really keeping himself busy these days.

Re:Good work Data.

[Fear the Clam]

It takes a lot of work to name a telescope after New York's new governor so quickly.

Obligatory Data Quote

[SeaDour]

"Life forms.... You tiny little life forms..... You precious little life forms.... Where are you?"

A Matter of Time...

[SeaDour]

Seems it's only a matter of time now before we can image a planet with pretty city lights on the dark side.

Obligatory Marvin Quote

[sm62704]

"Life... don't talk to me about life! Hate it or loathe it, you can't ignore it."

If I close one eye...

[uni4dfx]

I think I can see surface.

Google's next project

[aztec rain god]

Google-HD189733b (Beta, of course).

How hot is it?

[Brad1138]

Man it's hot. It's like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot.

Re:Whoa, whoa whoa!

[Anonymous Coward]

IF you had bothered to RTFA, you'd have known that the side nearest the star isn't quite the hottest. The hotspot is offset slightly; the theory being that there's a very strong circulation of atmosphere going on.

The wonder isn't that they've found out that one side is hotter than the other, as per your snide comment, but that they can estimate the temperatures of both sides closely, and even locate where the hottest spot is, and do it over interstellar distances. I think that's worth the "kajillion" dollars.

Re:Global Warming

[rbanffy]

No.

But Venus is a nice example of a runaway greenhouse effect on a rocky planet. When people predict a stable ice age because of increased polar melting, I am forced to show there are at least two stable states for a planet like ours and I prefer the ice-age one over the other.

And since we have been in and out ice ages for... ages, the other state seems much more stable.

Hot Jupiters dammit !!!

[unity100]

Eheheheeh, yea, that is as said, fantastic for an exclamation - Hot Jupiters !!!

Hot Jupiters!

[Progman3K]

That's amazing, batman!

I'm confused

[bill_of_wrongs]

Looking at the map it seems like the polar regions are the coolest. If that is so and the planet is tidal locked shouldn't the far side be cooler ?

Re:I'm confused

[cathector]

the article posits that the far side is still pretty hot for the same reason the big Hot Spot is not exactly facing the star: 6000 MPH (9656 KPH) winds are pushing everything around.

I'm not clear from the articles if by "coolest spot" they mean the coolest spot on the equator, or they're including the poles.

Re:I'm confused

[bill_of_wrongs]

Ok, but why are the winds blowing along the equator and not pole to pole for instance ? I'd think the tidal lock would also take away the mechanisms that cause permanent winds in that direction.

Re:I'm confused

[cathector]

good question. well even if it's tidally locked, the sucker is still orbiting the star once every what, 53 hours ? that's still pretty rapid rotation around the polar vector, which i could see giving rise to equatorial winds.

Re:I'm confused

[Lexta]

Agreed, but i don't really think we need equatorial winds to describe what is going on here. Could it just not be assumed that the planet is spinning on it's axis so it isn't tidally locked thus the hottest point is always going to be marginally off high noon.

If it really is going around the sun once every 53 hours I think that that's more than enough explanation for the way the temperature stays above 1000 degrees on both sides, which is actually hotter than the poles. If there really were incredibly strong winds wouldn't they effect the poles just as much; if not more than the other side of the planet?

1200 F, eh?

[GeorgiaCodeMonkey]

How long before Al Gore makes a movie about it? :D

Re:1200 F, eh?

[drapeau06]

Their Al Gore already did, and no one paid any attention. Look what happened!

tidally locked gas giant w/ massive winds ?

[cathector]

if the surface is whipping around at 6000 MPH, how do they determine it's tidally locked ?

or maybe it's just probable in view of its proximity to the body it's orbiting.

Re:tidally locked gas giant w/ massive winds ?

[Lexta]

I agree it doesn't make sense AT ALL. If you look at the Global Map of the temperature of the planet where it shows that the hottest point is not directly facing the sun. Wouldn't it make a great deal more sense to suggest that the planet is not tidally locked and is indeed spinning, thus the hottest area moves to the east? If it was due to incredibly fast winds i don't think that there would be such a strong distribution of heat towards the "equator". Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to say that the planet is most likely spinning and not tidally locked and due to the intense heat from the sun the area that has been exposed to the sun for the longest is simply the hottest. Thus the hottest part is always going to be slightly due to the east of high noon due to rotation. If it was really due to "strong winds" as they are attempting to justify i feel the temperature would be a lot more erratic, especially around the poles of the planet where the winds ideally would be travelling to/from due to the difference in temperature and pressure. In conclusion, tidally locked gas giant w/ massive winds? Definitely Not

Re:MOD KARMA WHORE DOWN

[Jarjarthejedi]

You expect people to read the article to get their temperature conversions? You must be new here...

Planet formation

[Cinnaman]

It seems like a little too recently that all the stars out there were thought to have no planets circling them.

Re:Embarassing that this is possible at all

[Black.Shuck]

"Get embarrassed?" Science is not a battle of wits.

Not quite exactly

[DrYak]

The idea was that 0-degrees was ice-water (e.g. the temperature where water can exist simultaneously as a liquid and a solid. The freezing temperature of water is actually lower than this

Actually the 0 was fixed as a mix of ice and salt, that also happened to be the lowest temperature observed in winter time in his region (Wikipedia has a couple of such stories).
0F is much lower than the freezing point of water (around 0C or +32F).

Celsius fixed his 0 according to physical properties of water - freezing and boiling point.
Because they where the most easily reproducible in any lab wishing to calibrate it's thermometer during this time (compared to Farenheit which required a MIX with salt for the lower point and unreliable body temperature as upper point).
Nowadays, the Celsius has been redefined a little bit in order to have a stricter definition (based on absolute zero and water's triple point).

Re:Not quite exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

As a matter of fact, it seems we still don't know for dead certain what Fahrenheit's reasoning behind his choices were. We've got some pretty good guesses, but I tried to do some research on this when another person asked me once, and I couldn't find any authoratative answers. Between Wikipedia and several assorted websites hosted on university domains that appeared to have some signs of authenticity, I came up with over half a dozen theories. I guess a lot got lost in the nearly 300 years since he came up with it.

I think the two best theories are:

1.) He set zero as the freezing point of salt-brine, the same as the Romer scale, one of the first standardized thermometry scales. He then chose a "semi-circle" of separation between the freezing and boiling points of normal water...180 degrees...to determine the step size.

2.) He just picked 0 as the freezing point of brine and 100 as human body temperature, but his measurements are a little off. The scale was later recalibrated to make 32 and 212 degrees key points. Very simple and it invokes two of the most interesting temperatures of his day (the lowest they could measure a liquid, and body temperature).

If you read a brief biography of Fahrenheit's day, you'll find he was the equivalent of a modern uber-haxor. He dropped out of an apprenticeship (becoming a fugitive in the process) and blew most of his time and money playing around in the new-fangled field of thermometry. Can you imagine the message board arguments he must've gotten in about Florence thermometers vs Venice Thermometers? Forget about kernels...we're talking liquid columns here!

Probably not locked at 1:1

[mangu]

The highest temperature region is about 30 degrees (angle, not temperature!) away from high noon. This, plus the relatively small temperature difference between the light hemisphere and dark hemisphere tell us that the planetary atmosphere is subject to extremely high winds, which are distributing the heat.

Or, much more plausible, rotation is not locked on a 1:1 scale. If the relation is synchronized on some higher harmonic, like Mercury is locked on a 3:2 ratio, the hottest spot should be displaced in the east-west direction. If it were at 1:1, it's a bit difficult to see why the hottest spot should be displaced.

Locking on harmonics other than 1:1 have another interesting consequence: it seems to point to the existence of other planets on the system. It's only when the orbit is perturbed by other planets that higher harmonics happen in spin-orbit resonance. In our system, both Mercury and Venus seem to show tidal locking effects due to the presence of the Earth.

Re:Probably not locked at 1:1

[mangu]

Tidal locking at non-unary ratios is due to eccentricity of orbit

True, but unless there are other planets in the system, the excentricity of the orbit of a planet, particularly one with such a small orbital period as HD 189733b, will eventually disappear.

The reason is that there is some (very) small drag in the interplanetary medium, caused by gas released by the star and the star's magnetic field, that decreases with distance. As a result of this the planet is slowed down when closest to the star. Over a long enough time this will circularize the orbit.

Re:Embarassing that this is possible at all

[deficite]

Anonymous Coward trolling is great isn't it? Does it pass the time between porn sessions? I guess I'll amuse you with a response: If you're so damn smart, why don't you show us YOUR findings and let us "embarrass" YOU. Personally, I am proud of what astronomers and physicists have accomplished in the past 100 years. Unlike politicians, scientists admit they're wrong on a daily basis. Also, unlike politicians, they don't dwell and bitch about it, they use it constructively and form wisdom based upon it.

They've found Hell

[Siddly]

I knew it had to out there somewhere.

Re:They've found Hell

[mjwx]

And who would have thought it was in New Jersey.

Re:They've found Hell

[Siddly]

Never thought of New Jersey or Philadelphia, 5 feet of snow last time I was there.

question about the heat map

[narkfly]

Okay, after taking a look at the article, the press release, and the associated images, I have a question about the pattern of recorded temperature on the surface of the planet. If the hot spot on the planet is offset by 30 degrees of the substellar (high noon) point because of a predicted 6,000 mph jetstream to the east, why then does the coolest equatorial temperature show up directly to the east of the hot spot? In other words, why doesn't the long orange tail of mid-temperatures extend to the east of the hot spot instead of to the west? Is there a basic principle that I'm missing here, or have i conceived the whole situation incorrectly?

Very intersting

[koduck]

Can i see it on astronomical map?

Re:Whoa, whoa whoa!

[Lithdren]

No they used it to decern from the data available that the hottest area does not make sence unless the surface of the planet has increadibly high winds, or some other force.

You know, like what scientsits like to do.