NASA says the Hubble Telescope has discovered two mysterious hot Jupiter-like planets, one of which has hail on it! Check out what NASA research has to say about it.
The Hubble telescope, which NASA has operated for the past 30 years, is studying a unique class of extremely hot exoplanets in our Milky Way. NASA’s Flying Observatory has now found two Jupiter-sized planets that are very close to their parent star and similar to Jupiter, and are being roasted to temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. how? Just know that the temperatures on these planets are high enough that even one of the strongest metals can be vaporized – Titan! NASA says that ‘they have the hottest planetary atmosphere ever.’
Astronomers are studying in detail these two mysterious hot exoplanets discovered by the Hubble Telescope. It’s mysterious because on one of these planets, called WASP-178b, it is evaporating hail, while the other planet with its upper atmosphere is being sunburned by intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation. It provides new insights into the diversity, complexity and strange chemistry in the far reaches of our galaxy.
Yes, the planet has hail!
The planet WASP-178b, about 1,300 light-years from Earth and with an atmosphere rich in silicon monoxide, was discovered by astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Telescope. Astronomers reported in the journal Nature that the daytime side of the planet’s atmosphere is cloudless, while the hot night side’s atmosphere whirls around at superstorm speeds reaching 2,000 miles a hour.
The planet is closely aligned with its star, which means that one side of the planet is always facing the star, similar to what our Moon does to Earth. Meanwhile, on the dark side, silicon monoxide is cool enough to condense into the rock created by the clouds. That is the reason behind the display of rocks on this planet. But the planet is hot enough to vaporize rocks even during the day and night, according to astronomers. “We knew we were seeing something really interesting with this silicon monoxide feature,” said Josh Lothringer of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
No doubt these super-hot planets like Jupiter are uninhabitable. But such observations and studies will help pave the way for a better understanding of the atmospheres of potentially habitable terrestrial planets. “If we can’t figure out what’s going on on super-hot Jupiters, where we have certainly reliable observational data, we won’t stand a chance of figuring out what’s going on,” Lothringer said. appear in weaker spectra from observations of extraterrestrial planets.”
