Exoplanets Archives - Argyll Free Press

The ‘Two Face’ of Super-Earth Exoplanets

March 31, 2016 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

The study of exoplanets has been a focus of scientists and astronomers for years, whether it has been for merely understanding the surrounding solar systems or for finding another planet such as ours. A planet that could host the human race one day or a planet that could already be the home of intelligent life forms.

But looking for such planets is a long and tenuous road, and the discoveries on the way may find their worth in equally amazing results. We may not be finding life or homes, but instead, we are finding secrets of how the universe works, how it was formed and maybe even how we came to be.

On that note, an international group of astronomers has recently completed the mapping of the surface of a very peculiar exoplanet. Named 55 Cancri e, this particular exoplanet was the topic of scientific discussion recently after the Hubble Space Telescope was able to study the composition of its atmosphere through a new method of observation and analysis.

Now, it will make an even better topic of discussion as while the researchers were keeping their eyes on it, they noticed something astounding. Starting with the readings that described a very high margin of temperature swings on the surface of 55 Cancri e, scientists soon realized that this constant see-saw of heat has led the planet of developing a two-faced feature. One half of the planet is almost completely solid while the other half is nearly completely buried in lava. As a result, the hot side can score temperatures up to 2,500 degrees Celsius (roughly 4,500 Fahrenheit) while the cool side only goes as far as 1,100 degrees Celsius (2,000 Fahrenheit).

A year on 55 Cancri e lasts only 18 hours. One half is always facing the star it orbits, similarly to how the Moon does around our own Earth. While the scorched face of this exoplanet has lost any traces of an atmosphere, scientists believe that the ‘cool’ side may still detain traces, despite its still hot temperatures. Researchers mentioned that the loss of its atmosphere may have been determined by the fact that heat is never being efficiently transferred from the scorched face and into the other one.

55 Cancri e remains one very exciting starting point of study for astronomers as it’s one of the closest exoplanets to our solar system, making its observation a little less difficult.

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On the Hunt for the Most Eccentric Planets

March 21, 2016 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

An eccentric planet in scientific terms doesn’t quite mean the same thing one would expect in most other topics of discussion. When talking about space objects that move around their parent star, an eccentric planet refers to a perfectly circular orbit. In that case, we say that the eccentricity of said planet is zero while higher values will describe a more elliptical orbit.

In our solar system, the best example of an eccentric planet would be Pluto: not only does the orbit rest at an approximate 17-degree angle from what is usually considered horizontal, but its orbit – which takes 248 Earth years to complete – comes as close as 29 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, and 49 AU when furthest away, scoring the highest planet orbit deviation in our solar system.

Because of the unnatural way in which they orbit their parent stars as well as their effects on the objects that they move around, scientists have long manifested a huge interest in them. As a result, they are constantly scouting out the nearest solar systems from the Milky Way for such planets using a variety of observers and telescopes – airborne or on land.

Their quest for locating these peculiar objects in space has recently elicited results as researchers may have just found one of the ‘most eccentric’ planets we have ever witnessed. And it’s not even that far away from friendly land: 117 light years away from planet Earth. On a cosmic level, that is pretty much next door. The exoplanet, named HD 20782, scores an orbital eccentricity of 0.96 and it comes at its closest point in its orbit only once every 597 Earth days.

Even though the planet comes close in mass to Jupiter, its movements around the binary star system make it resemble a comet more than it does a planet as it slows down when it comes close to the parent star – at a staggering distance of 0.06 AU, or 9 million kilometers – then slingshots away into what appears to be an almost flat orbit.

But that is not the only feature of interest regarding HD 20782. On top of the peculiar system that it resides in, scientists have also managed to get a glimpse of the planet’s atmospheric composition when it reflected the star’s light. Researchers speculate that the flash was a result of its atmosphere being suddenly heated by stellar wind when it came at the lowest of its orbit. The findings have been officially published in the online Astrophysical Journal on February 28^th.

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New Progress in the Search for Planet Nine

February 24, 2016 By Deborah Campbell Leave a Comment

Researchers have come with news of new progress in the search for Planet Nine. Knowledge of our own solar system is the first step of understanding and merely considering beginning our trek through outer space. And over the length of time things changed considerably. What was initially believed to be the ninth planet of our solar system ended up getting demoted to the status of a dwarf planet part of the Kuiper belt. Certainly that was the story of Pluto starting with the year 2006.

Pluto’s class of dwarf planets was joined by 2 more officially deemed planets bodies all the way in the outer reaches of our solar system – Haumea and Makemake – and for a long time that was considered to be the end of the planetary system. However, scientists have suspected the presence of a ninth planet for nearly a month now.

It all started when scientists noticed some strange effects happening on the outer skirts of our solar system when mathematical models and simulations would result in signs of gravitational effects of one more body, not visible to us however, onto the other objects in the Kuiper Belt. This intrigued scientists to study the phenomenon even further and theorize what kind of planet this is.

So far, Planet Nine remains a mere guess as it has never been spotted. But calculations suggest that it is a planet 10 times the mass of Earth, close in size to the exoplanets from our solar system. It was believed to be 600 times further away from the Sun than Earth is. This would result in an orbit that takes about 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete.

The evidence that supports this idea is the peculiar manner in which Kuiper Belt objects orbit around the sun. Unlike most planets that display a nearly circular orbit around the star of our solar system, the Kuiper Belt objects have wildly elongated orbits that suggest another object, and most likely one that is much larger in size, pulling on them.

Even since the discovery, scientists have been at work with trying to find a method to spot the elusive Planet Nine. Given its extremely long orbit time, narrowing down where to look for it would take ridiculous amounts of time. However, a group of scientists from France have concluded that a way of lowering the amount of sky searching they need to do to spot it is to study the data sent by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

The spacecraft is currently orbiting Saturn, and by ensuring that the mysterious Planet Nine is not within its visual reach, they could exclude two zones form the very beginning. Thanks to a number of mathematical models that can narrow down the planet’s currently position, scientists say that they have reduced the search area by 50%.

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