Thanks to the team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, we have a first map of a planet beyond our solar system.
You are seeing the super-heated, supersonic clouds of a giant planet only three million miles from its star. The planet is a tad bigger than Jupiter, and that whitish spot on the right is about twice as large as Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.
The other thing you should know is that spot is not a garden; the cloud temperatures there are 1700 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s enough to melt these metals: tin, aluminum, and lead. If you had any pennies in your pocket to toss away to make a wish, they would turn into a gas begfore too long.
The team examined the planet … using the Infrared Array Camera on board NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Infrared observations offer an advantage because the brightness difference between star and planet is lessened, making it easier to tease out the planet’s signal.
Over the course of 33 hours, the team collected more than a quarter million data points. Although Spitzer could not resolve the planet into a disk, by measuring changes as the planet rotated, the team created a simple longitudinal map. That is, they measured the planet’s brightness in a series of pole-to-pole strips across the planet’s visible cloud-tops, then assembled those strips into an overall picture.
Go to the HSCFA site for more info, if you care to. Nighttime lows dip to 1200. And if you care to go flying, scientists estimate the upper clouds of this planet are toodling along at 6000 mph. That’s some serious jet stream.
Catholic Sensibility 