Hubble finds planet with glowing water atmosphere | BBC Sky at Night Magazine
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Scientists have discovered the strongest evidence to date for a stratosphere, a mid-level layer of atmosphere in which temperature increases with altitude, on a planet outside our Solar System, or exoplanet.
The stratosphere was found around a hot Jupiter exoplanet, WASP-121b, using data taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
With a mass 1.2 times that of Jupiter and a radius about 1.9 times Jupiter’s, Hubble discovered that WASP-121b had high temperatures in its stratosphere relative to its lower atmosphere.
“This result is exciting because it shows that a common trait of most of the atmospheres in our solar system – a warm stratosphere – also can be found in exoplanet atmospheres,” said Mark Marley, study co-author based at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
Reporting in the journal Nature, scientists were also able to determine that the exoplanet has an orbital period of a mere 1.3 days. This exoplanet is so close to its star that its outer atmosphere is heated to a blazing 2,500 °C, hot enough to boil lead.
“This super-hot exoplanet is going to be a benchmark for our atmospheric models,” said Hannah Wakeford, study co-author who worked on this research while at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.