#exo-planet

Sara Hermellin

Concept artist/Illustrator - [email protected]

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"Webb Forecasts Partially Cloudy Skies on Ultra-Hot Neptune LTT 9779 b.

Today’s weather: 3600F degrees, partly cloudy, and 100% chance of radiation!

Webb gave us a peek into how planets evolve under extreme circumstances, by taking a look at a rare type of exoplanet called an ultra-hot Neptune. According to the lead researcher Louis-Philippe Coulombe, 'Finding a planet of that size so close to its host star is like finding a snowball that hasn’t melted in a fire.'

Like Earth’s moon, LTT 9779 b is tidally locked so that one side is always facing its star. Though the day side is a searing 3600F (2000C), reflective clouds keep the western side of that face cooler than the eastern side. It’s likely that this uneven distribution of heat and clouds, is driven by powerful winds that transport heat around the planet. Being close to the star also means the planet is subject to constant radiation. This makes it a unique laboratory for understanding clouds and the transport of heat on highly irradiated planets.

Read more: link

The image is an artist concept of LTT 9779 b.

Description: An artist concept of an exoplanet. It shows the brightly lit day-time face, with the left half only shrouded in white clouds. The right half of the planet is organge in appearance. The planet is depicted on a black background. The words Artist Concept appear in white in the right center of the image.

Credit: Benoit Gougeon; Université de Montréal"

Artistic Impression: The Surface of TRAPPIST-1f 

“ If you could stand on the surface of the newly discovered Earth-sized exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f, what would you see? Presently, no Earthling knows for sure, but the featured illustration depicts a reasoned guess based on observational data taken by NASA's Sun-orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope. In 2017, four more Earth-sized planets were found by Spitzer, including TRAPPIST-1f, in addition to three discovered in 2015 from the ground. From the planet's surface, near the mild terminator between night and day, you might see water, ice, and rock on the ground, while water-based clouds might hover above. Past the clouds, the small central star TRAPPIST-1 would appear more red than our Sun, but angularly larger due to the close orbit. With seven known Earth-sized planets -- many of which pass near each other -- the TRAPPIST-1 system is not only a candidate to have life, but intercommunicating life -- although a preliminary search has found no obvious transmissions.”

Moving beyond the solar system to exoplanets

Ever since the first exoplanet (51 Pegasi b) was discovered in 1995 by Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz, there has been renewed activity and interest in this field. The Kepler and K2 missions of NASA have identified thousands of planet candidates. Now there are nearly 5,000 planet candidates, and of these, some 3,397 have been confirmed as planets, according to the NASA exoplanet archive.

The…

Amazing photo shows likely alien planet 1,200 light-years away.

Amazing!  It’s NOT the blue dot,..it’s the really tiny spec to the upper left...see it?! :D

“The potential planet appears as a brownish dot to the left of the bright bluish-white star CVSO 30 in the newly released image, which was captured by the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile.“