Astronomers have discovered an unusual exoplanet with “iron” clouds
MOSCOW, 15 Aug — RIA Novosti. Planetary scientists have discovered extremely unusual exoplanet in the constellation of Cygnus, whose red-hot atmosphere to such high temperatures that it is hovering cloud of titanium and iron. Their findings were published in the journal Nature.
“When we figured out the properties of the atmosphere KELT-9b, we realized that it would consist entirely of atoms, not molecules. Guided by these predictions, we tried to find iron in its atmosphere. When we looked deeper, we found even more surprises,” says Jens Haymakers (Jens Hoeijmakers) at the University of Geneva (Switzerland).
“Hot Jupiter” heated astronomers call gas giants that are far from their stars only 2.2−75 million kilometers.
In the Solar system, even mercury is coming to the star closer than 46 million kilometers, and therefore, the atmospheres of these planets reign really hellish temperatures of about 1000-1300 degrees Kelvin.
Finding such planets is much easier than other heavenly bodies, and they make up a large part of the known akterov. The discovery of “hot Jupiters” for the first time, scientists put before the fact that the atmosphere on these planets may consist of very exotic materials. For example, in recent years, it was discovered gas giants with lead and glass clouds and air, consisting of evaporated metals and rocks in the upper layers which is sometimes the rain of rubies and sapphires.
More recently, scientists have found several “hot Jupiters,” whose atmosphere was red-hot to even higher temperatures, in excess of 2.5 thousand degrees Kelvin.
In addition to the infernal heat, their air layers had an unusual structure — they were hot on the outside and colder inside, like the stratosphere of the Earth.
Such anomalies led scientists to assume that these “ultraderecha Jupiters” warms up some heavy duty greenhouse effect, which can produce two chemicals — titanium oxide or vanadium oxide.
Haymakers, and his colleagues have shown that titanium is indeed present in the atmosphere of such worlds, watching KELT-9b, the hottest planet in the Galaxy, remote from us at 650 light years. It is located unusually close to the sun — a year on it lasts about 1.5 earth days, so on the surface the reign of hellish temperatures and extremely unusual atmospheric conditions.