Stellar Blast Boils Away Some of a Planet's Atmosphere

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday June 28, 2012 @07:50AM from the cloudy-with-a-chance-of-destruction dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes "Using a combination of Hubble and Swift observations, astronomers have apparently witnessed some of a planet's atmosphere being peeled away by a powerful stellar blast. HD 189733b orbits its star just 4 million km from the surface, and a few hours after Swift detected a big X-ray flare from the star, Hubble data revealed a big jump in hydrogen absorption as the planet transited the star. This indicates the planet's atmosphere was blasted off by the flare to the tune of a thousand tons of hydrogen per second. The planet is so hot it probably already loses a substantial amount of air to space all the time, but this spike is the first time a change in an exoplanet's atmosphere has been detected."

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4 mil km by SJHillman · 2012-06-28 07:54 · Score: 4, Funny

4 million km is roughly 0.02 AU or 1/10th the mean distance of Mercury from the Sun
It someone got that close to me, I'd let them have it too.
1. Re:4 mil km by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 08:27 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Lots of us are a whole lot closer to you than that.
2. Re:4 mil km by Tarlus · 2012-06-28 09:27 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  I look forward to the day when we have lavish restaurants stationed nearby so that we can watch while we dine.
  
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Re:Athmosphere or air? by i+kan+reed · 2012-06-28 07:56 · Score: 3, Funny

I think it's all just hot air.