Clear blue skies allures our eyes.
How about yellow skies with acid rains?
Seems little weird and way beyond our artistic imagination. Well, we have ample likelihood to study ‘one’ Jupiter- size super- hot planet WASP- 79b.
NASA’s Hubble space telescope along with the Magellan II telescope (in Chile) studied this exoplanet which is 780 light-years from Earth. It orbits a star, brighter and hotter than Sun and is largest among the exoplanets which orbit other stars. The atmosphere is hazy and is about 3000 degrees Fahrenheit. They studied how starlight is filtered through the planet’s atmosphere to determine its chemical composition and presence of water vapour was observed.
Most interestingly studies revealed, no evidence for Rayleigh scattering in the planet’s atmosphere which is responsible for blue skies (scattering of the shorter wavelength of light).On account of this during day time the sky is likely to be observed ‘yellowish’. And paradoxically the planet is in an unusual polar orbit which is against known theories about how planets form. Compared to other hot Jupiter’s WASP-79b possibly have steamy humidity, scattered clouds and iron lifted to higher altitudes might precipitate as ‘rain’. ” This is a strong indication of an unknown atmospheric process that we’re just not accounting for in our physical models. I’ve shown the WASP-79b spectrum to a number of colleagues, and their consensus is that’s weird “, said Kristin Showalter Sotzen.
A spectrograph was used to study the planet. They expected to decrease in blue starlight due to Rayleigh Scattering but observed the other way around. The blue light was less absorbed and scattered by the atmosphere. The result was compatible with the independent observation made by TESS (NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). Spectral data over longer infrared wavelengths are required to confirm the presence of water vapour and the planets chemical composition. To unwind the mysteries associated with this Hot Giant we’ve to find other planet with similar conditions.
– Serin Mary Binoy
Find out ‘How an exoplanet mysteriously disappeared‘
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