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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."
on google maps?
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So, how much is that in real temperature? Like, 35 degrees C or something?
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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...
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You can read a preprint of the published paper for free. (The published version is here, but full text access requires a Nature subscription.)
The warmest spot is 927 C, on the equivalent of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, and the coolest region is 'only' 649 C.
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Seems it's only a matter of time now before we can image a planet with pretty city lights on the dark side.
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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.
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.
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That's amazing, batman!
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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 ?
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.
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How long before Al Gore makes a movie about it? :D
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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).
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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?