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Tracking the Weather On an Exoplanet

Posted by Soulskill on from the for-when-dad-runs-out-of-content-on-the-weather-channel dept.

schwit1 writes: Scientists have begun gathering increasingly detailed information about the atmosphere and weather on the exoplanet HD189733B, 63 light years away with an orbit that produces a transit every 2.2 days. The temperature appears to rise with increasing altitude, reaching 3,000 degrees at the top of the atmosphere. There are also strong winds blowing from the cold to the hot side of the planet.

43 comments

  1. Small Correction by anzha · · Score: 4, Informative

    An exoplanet should NOT be HD189733B. A capital B would denote a star. A lower case b denotes a planet. And, yes, you can have a HD XXXXBb. Alpha Centauri Bb is one of those. Its an S type circumbinary system. For those who are interested, I have a blog which links to the exoplanet papers are they come out, whether its from arxiv or one of the scientific journals.

    --
    Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
    1. Re:Small Correction by Ryanrule · · Score: 2

      Oh come on, we are just starting at this, and already its a clusterfuck.

    2. Re:Small Correction by anzha · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you mean 'just started' to mean 'for 20+ years now,' sure. The nomenclature for stars has been around for far, far longer. Exoplanets are given their b-c-d-e etc designation - never a, btw - in the order of discovery, not the order in the planetary system as well. Its not a clusterfuck. Its just a different discipline's rules and they've been consistent for a generation at least.

      --
      Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
    3. Re:Small Correction by sconeu · · Score: 2

      Alpha Centauri B Flat?

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    4. Re:Small Correction by Ryanrule · · Score: 1

      on the scale of the things we are classifying, we are nanoseconds in.

    5. Re:Small Correction by anzha · · Score: 1

      From that POV, our existence is about one second in. at the most.

      --
      Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
    6. Re:Small Correction by anzha · · Score: 1

      nah. Alpha Centauri A tried to shoot the eye out of Alpha Centauri.

      --
      Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
    7. Re:Small Correction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It feels like it took me a lifetime to write this.

    8. Re:Small Correction by paiute · · Score: 1

      Well I hope you are happy now. It is going to take 63 years for the correction to reach HD189733B, er HD189733b.

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      If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
    9. Re: Small Correction by ediron2 · · Score: 1

      Why never 'a'? Have checked a few online sources and can't find the reason.

    10. Re: Small Correction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rules of grammar are even older: it should be "an" before an "h"; not "a".

    11. Re: Small Correction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends if it's silent.

    12. Re: Small Correction by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      My guess, the star is "a", the number is the catalog name of the star, and the things which orbit it are derived from that.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    13. Re: Small Correction by anzha · · Score: 2

      yup. I'm afraid the blackhole made by LHC ate your QP doll though. Sorry.

      --
      Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
  2. Exoglobal warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What do the computer models tell us about how the exoplanet can halt its global warming?

    1. Re:Exoglobal warming by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 2

      Well, forcing it to trade-in it's Hummer for a tax credit to buy a new Tesla, Prius or Leaf would be a start -- also, banning sodas, severely taxing and restricting smoking and requiring fast food franchises to offer healthy alternatives can't hurt.

    2. Re:Exoglobal warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can't hurt; probably would help. Of course, that assumes there are humans or human like creatures on the planet who actually give a shit.

  3. Wondering... by drooling-dog · · Score: 2

    ...how long it will be before the climate on HD189733b becomes a political issue.

  4. Weather forecast by rossdee · · Score: 5, Funny

    Not going to be very usefil knowing what its going to be like tomorrow when that was 63 years ago

    1. Re:Weather forecast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, and when the forecast is wrong the scientists will just blame the results on engineering design flaws in the instrumentation....

    2. Re:Weather forecast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      technically, according to special relativity, that is the weather on the planet today, it would just take us a minimum of 63 years to get to the planet, by which time the weather would obviously change.

    3. Re:Weather forecast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If an alien message that we get today was sent today, and if we immediately send a reply then by symmetry aliens also get it the same day and we've achieved FTL communication!

    4. Re:Weather forecast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We could include a dichotomous paper for all possible replies detailing all our answers thereby guaranteeing successful FTL

    5. Re:Weather forecast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That isn't "technically." Technically the path light travels in a vacuum is a path of zero proper time, but it makes for a crappy definition of "now" considering it is path dependent. Especially so in special relativity where acceleration is accounted for, because you could bounce a light beam off a mirror and it would have traveled a zero proper time path, making a time point in your own past "now" (or for a GR example, two different paths of light through a gravitational field taking with the same source and destination). It is easy enough to define "now" as conventionally understood, one just has to understand it is frame dependent. But in Earth's frame, that would mean the light left the planet 63 years ago, not now.

  5. If you thought NOAA Has a hard time .... by pollarda · · Score: 2

    If you think NOAA has it hard now, just imagine what a bitch it will be to provide accurate 10 day weather reports for an exoplanet 64 light years away given 64 year old data.

    And j ust so you know, I'm going to drive my SUV no matter what they tell me I might be doing to the weather patterns of some random exoplanet.

    1. Re:If you thought NOAA Has a hard time .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      provide accurate 10 day weather reports for an exoplanet 64 light years away given 64 year old data.

      For a tidally locked planet, it might almost be as easy as making a weather report for southern California.

  6. Notable point in history by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 2

    Every once in awhile I like to mentally stop and take a look around to see where we are. I think this is a good moment for that.

    Notice that we are collecting data on the weather patterns of a planet not in our solar system.

    We live in the future.

    1. Re:Notable point in history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And we live in the past, according to billions of people, which means your claim about living in the future is meaningless.

    2. Re:Notable point in history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And still, they fuck up tomorrow's weather forecasts for my own neighborhood.

    3. Re:Notable point in history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No they aren't. They are just doing guesses based on what they think the temperature is at various points of the globe. They can't detect the "winds blowing from the cold to hot side". They are just guessing that they are there because they think there is a temperature differential.

    4. Re:Notable point in history by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

      No they aren't. They are just doing guesses based on what they think the temperature is at various points of the globe. They can't detect the "winds blowing from the cold to hot side". They are just guessing that they are there because they think there is a temperature differential.

      They seem to think this thing is tidally locked, so with the same side always facing the star it's all but guaranteed there's a temperature differential.

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  7. Bullshit by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

    how can they possibly tell the weather on a thing they only know is there and can barely see. All I can think is models will give you a best guess based on a bunch of assumptions but is it not a bit much to say the weather is this.

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    1. Re:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First humans knew that cold part of the year was coming and they could prepare offering them the advantage against all other animals. We can predict when and where the hurricanes may hit the land - inaccurate as this may still be it is incredible progress. We are making progress in estimating conditions in some parts of the atmosphere on this odd planet 63light years from here. It is an improvement considering we did not know anything about it some time ago or? This means we enhance our ability in 'weather forecast' on this foreign planet and that is what the summary claims is being done. Why do you have to complain?

    2. Re: Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is fucking bullshit. These are guesses at best. You can't tell me they can extrapolate all this information about a planet 63 light years away but we need to send a probe to Pluto to take a look because it's too "far away."

    3. Re: Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is BS just like how some people claim you can sort chicken eggs better by holding them up to a bright light instead of just looking at them in a dark room from a distance.

  8. We just covered this paper in our class last week by StupendousMan · · Score: 2

    I'm co-teaching a graduate course on exoplanets, and we talked about this paper in one of our meetings last week. Here's the link to our discussion of "spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres:"

          http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/e...

    You can read all our materials at

          http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/e...

    Enjoy!

    --
    Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
    mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu