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Sizzling Weather On a Dive-Bombing Planet

Posted by timothy on from the much-sexier-after-computer-enhancement dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes "A massive planet orbiting the star HD 80606 is on a roller-coaster orbit: it dive bombs the star, in just 55 days dropping from over 120 million km to just 4 million km from the star's surface! Astronomers used the Spitzer Space Telescope to observe the heat from the planet as it gets blasted by its star, and used that data to make a beautiful computer-modeled image of what the planet must look like. Their results: an ube-rviolent storm that acts as if a bomb were exploded in the planet's atmosphere."

4 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. Whoa! by dov_0 · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's the biggest BBQ I've ever heard of!

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  2. Don't dumb it down. by syousef · · Score: 4, Informative

    Dive-bombing? This isn't Pearl Harbour the movie. Try "highly elliptical" orbit, and "close approach" or "close proximity". This is /. not 5th grade.

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    1. Re:Don't dumb it down. by Muad'Dave · · Score: 4, Informative

      Highly elliptical means that the object's Orbital Eccentricity is high - in this case, 0.927. A circle has eccentricity 0, and the Earth has an eccentricity of about 0.0167. If you don't consider that planet's orbit to be highly elliptical, compare its 0.927 to that of Halley's Comet: 0.967.

      Note that there can be eccentricities >= 1, but they're not closed orbits.

      For an interesting orbit, consider the Molniya Orbit and its kin used by satellites that need long dwell times over high latitude areas.

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  3. mod parent up by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...though "Flamebait" seems strangely appropriate for this topic.

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