Using data collected by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, researchers have managed to deliver the first weather forecast from a distant planet outside our Solar System – between 1,400 to 1,650 degrees Celsius on the sunlit side and only 20 to 230 degrees on the dark side. With such temperature extremes, if one will to move across the planet from the night side to the day side, the temperature jump would be equivalent to leaping into a volcano.The world, known as Upsilon Andromedae b, orbits close into a star that is 380 trillion km from Earth.
The results, reported in the journal Science, suggest weather systems transport very little heat from one side of the planet to the other.
This means one face of the planet is blisteringly hot, while the other is frigid in comparison.The finding represents the first time that any kind of variation has been seen across the surface of an extrasolar planet (also sometimes called exoplanet).
Upsilon Andromedae b was first discovered in 1996 around the star Upsilon Andromedae. It is what is known as a "hot-Jupiter" planet, because it is made of gas like our Jovian giant, and is hot, due to its tight, 4.6-day-long journey around its star. one side of Upsilon Andromeda b is perpetually in cold dark, while the other is forever blistering under the heat of its star.
The planet orbits its star at one-sixth the distance of Mercury from our own Sun.
Link: BBC & Space.com
Images: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Tags: Upsilon Andromedae b | Weather | Temperature | Planet | Extrasolar | Astronomy | Space
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