For decades, astronomers have been wondering about planets beyond our solar system — called exoplanets — and whether we could learn about these far-off worlds. With the introduction of tools like the James Webb Space Telescope, we’re now able to not only detect exoplanets, but also to learn about them in detail. Recently, astronomers created the first 3D view of an exoplanet atmosphere, letting them peer into the climate of another world.
The researchers used a ground-based telescope, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), which consists of four telescopes that work together to take detailed readings of distant objects. They found that exoplanet WASP-121b, which has surface temperatures of over 3,000 Kelvins, or 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, is so hot that metals like iron and titanium can be whipped up into the atmosphere, carried by powerful winds.
“This planet’s atmosphere behaves in ways that challenge our understanding of how weather works — not just on Earth, but on all planets. It feels like something out of science fiction,” said lead researcher Julia Victoria Seidel of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile.
By looking at the 3D structure of the atmosphere, the researchers found that the planets has winds which act in different layers. The iron, sodium, and hydrogen elements all move in separate layers which rotate differently relative to the orbit of the planet. It’s a complex, involved picture which underlines that other planets have systems which are just as complex — or even more so — than the climate of our own planet, and that there are many possible new configurations of climate for us to discover.
“What we found was surprising: a jet stream rotates material around the planet’s equator, while a separate flow at lower levels of the atmosphere moves gas from the hot side to the cooler side,” said Seidel. “This kind of climate has never been seen before on any planet.”
An animation shows the findings of different layers and how they move around the planet:
The observations were made using the VLT’s ESPRESSO instrument, which brings together data from four large telescopes into one signal, allowing the researchers to track the movement of elements like iron, sodium, and hydrogen. By following these movements, they could track the path of the winds and build up a 3D model.
“It’s truly mind-blowing that we’re able to study details like the chemical makeup and weather patterns of a planet at such a vast distance,” said fellow researcher Bibiana Prinoth of Lund University, Sweden.
The research is published in two papers in the journals Nature and Astronomy & Astrophysics.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.