MessageToEagle.com - It's the most alien world we can only imagine and for the first time
a space-based infrared telescope - Spitzer Space Telescope - has detected light emanating from a "super-Earth"
located in this system and orbiting a bright star, known as 55 Cancri, in a mere 18 hours.
"The spacecraft is pioneering the study of atmospheres of distant planets and paving the way for NASA's upcoming James
Webb Space Telescope to apply a similar technique on potentially habitable planets."
Previously, Spitzer and other telescopes were able to study the planet by analyzing how the light from 55 Cancri
changed as the planet passed in front of the star.
In the new study, Spitzer measured how much infrared light comes from the planet itself. The results reveal the
planet is likely dark, and its sun-facing side is more than 2,000 Kelvin (3,140 degrees Fahrenheit), hot
enough to melt metal.
The new information is consistent with a prior theory that 55 Cancri e is a water world: a rocky core
surrounded by a layer of water in a "supercritical" state where it is both liquid and gas, and topped by a blanket of steam.
"It could be very similar to Neptune, if you pulled Neptune in toward our sun and watched its atmosphere boil away,"
said Michaël Gillon of Université de Liège in Belgium, principal investigator of the research, which appears in the
Astrophysical Journal. The lead author is Brice-Olivier Demory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Artist's depiction of an exoplanet via NASA
The 55 Cancri system is relatively close to Earth, at 41 light-years away. It has five planets, with 55 Cancri e the
closest to the star and tidally locked, so one side always faces the star.
Spitzer discovered the sun-facing side is extremely hot, indicating the planet probably does not have a substantial
atmosphere to carry the sun's heat to the unlit side.
Magician of a Planet Disappears to Reveal Itself
This plot of data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals the light from a "super Earth" called 55 Cancri e.
The planet is the smallest yet, beyond our solar system, to reveal its direct light. Super Earth's are more massive
than Earth but lighter than gas giants like Neptune. While this planet is not habitable, the observations are an important
milestone toward being able to eventually perform a similar technique on even smaller, potentially Earth-like planets.
The plot shows how the infrared light from the 55 Cancri system, both the star and planet, changed as the planet
passed behind its star in what is called an occultation. When the planet disappeared, the total light dropped,
and then increased back to normal levels as the planet circled back into view. The drop indicated how much light
came directly from the planet itself. This type of information is important for studying the temperatures and
compositions of planetary atmospheres beyond our own. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018, likely will be able to learn even more about the planet's
composition. The telescope might be able to use a similar infrared method to Spitzer to search other potentially habitable
planets for signs of molecules possibly related to life.
"When we conceived of Spitzer more than 40 years ago, exoplanets hadn't even been discovered," said Michael Werner,
Spitzer project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Because Spitzer was built very well,
it's been able to adapt to this new field and make historic advances such as this."
In 2005, Spitzer became the first telescope to detect light from a planet beyond our solar system. To the surprise of many,
the observatory saw the infrared light of a "hot Jupiter," a gaseous planet much larger than the solid 55 Cancri e.
Since then, other telescopes, including NASA's Hubble and Kepler space telescopes, have performed similar feats with gas
giants using the same method. This marks the first time, however, that light from a super-Earth has been detected.
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MessageToEagle.com - It's the most alien world we can only imagine and for the first time
a space-based infrared telescope - Spitzer Space Telescope - has detected light emanating from a "super-Earth"
located in this system and orbiting a bright star, known as 55 Cancri, in a mere 18 hours.
Scientists at the University of Goettingen and the Carnegie Institution for Science in the U.S. Washington have discovered a potentially habitable planet, located 22 light years away from Earth.
The super-Earth, named GJ 667Cc has the mass four and a half times that of our Earth and an orbit of 28.15 days.
The planet GJ 667Cc orbits a dwarf star of the class M, 22 light years away which corresponds to approximately 209 trillion kilometers.
The Universe is full of many strange and incredible things.
Recently astronomers announced they discovered that warp-speed planets can actually zoom through space at a few percent of the speed of light, up to 30 million miles per hour! Space is indeed full of wonders and there are alien worlds that stretches our imagination.
Just imagine a planet where ice is actually hot! It's fantastic, isn't it?
Astronomers are now discovering more and more so-called "waterworld," which might be covered in broiling-hot ice!
The Universe is full remarkable wonders that challenge our imagination and TrES-2b is one of them.
To say that TrES-2b is a dark planet is an understatement. Actually, TrES-2b is the darkest exoplanet ever discovered.
This extraordinary, mysterious alien world is blacker than coal! What exactly is causing this extreme darkness remeains unclear.
The "Evil Eye" of Jupiter stands out clearly against the rest of the giant planet.
Vast, oval-shaped red marking with its "wake" of counter-rotating vortices has puzzled astronomers for at least a century.
What does that bright red spot consist of?
Is it some kind of substance that has coagulated?
Or is it some strange extraterrestrial life-form thriving in Jupiter's bizarre atmosphere?
In 1943, an ancient papyrus was bought by the Cairo museum.
It was written in Hieratic and although portions of it were eaten away by ants, it was a very precious ancient document.
The papyrus contained three separate books dealing with astronomy. One of the books was the Cairo Calendar, and now it reveals an ancient astronomical secret...
A group of European astronomers has discovered an ancient planetary system that is likely to be a survivor from one of the earliest cosmic eras, 13 billion years ago.
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Whereas planets usually form within clouds that include heavier chemical elements, the star HIP 11952 contains very little other than hydrogen and helium.
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that reveals new information about the planet's core, topography, and the mysterious radar bright material in the permanently shadowed areas near the poles.
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concerning life, the Universe, and simply everything. Now scientists are planning to create a similar machine. It is called the Living Earth Simulator (LES).