SPACE — Earlier this month, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) announced the discovery of a hot giant exoplanet, WASP 69b that has a tail. The length of the gas tail is much longer than previously thought. This comet-like tail is 560,000 km long.
The length of this tail is seven times longer than the width of the planet itself. According to scientists, the tail is the result of the parent star burning off the atmosphere of the planet WASP-69b.
Scientists say confirmation of the existence of exoplanets with tails will help them better understand how planets evolve.
The findings were published in a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal on January 9, 2024.
WASP-69b: Planet Jupiter Panas
WASP-69b is a gas giant planet the size of Jupiter. WASP-69b is 160 light years from Earth.
Unlike Jupiter, the planet WASP-69b is a very hot world. In fact, astronomers call it a hot Jupiter.
This planet orbits so close to its star that its atmosphere is very hot and inhospitable. For information, the planet Mercury in the Solar system orbits the sun every 88 days. However, WASP-69b completed one orbit in less than four days.
This planet is close enough to its star that radiation from the star is slowly stripping away the planet’s atmosphere.
Giant Exoplanets with Comet Tails
The researchers discovered that when these exoplanet atmospheres escape into space, the star’s solar wind (similar to the sun’s solar wind) transforms them into comet-like tails. The researchers used a 10-meter telescope and its spectrograph called NIRSPEC at the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii for the new research.
Scientists had previously suspected that the planet had a tail about 170,000 km long. However, new findings show that the tail is more than three times larger, about 560,000 km long.
For previous observations, astronomers have used a 3.5-meter telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain and a 5-meter telescope at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County. Lead author Dakotah Tyler at UCLA said previous research suggested the planet lost some of its atmosphere and likely had a fluffy tail.
“However, now we have definitely detected this tail and shown that it is at least seven times longer than the planet itself,” he said, as reported by Earth Sky.
The planet’s missing atmosphere
These findings will help astronomers learn more about how stellar winds affect planets in other planetary systems. Co-author Erik Petigura at UCLA says atmospheric erosion plays a key role in explaining the type of planet with a tail.
Previously, scientists suspected that the period of atmospheric loss had ended long ago. “The WASP-69b system is a diamond in the rough because we have the rare opportunity to study atmospheric mass loss in real time and understand the critical physics that shape thousands of other planets.”
2024-02-02 23:35:00
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