Stellar Blast Boils Away Some of a Planet's Atmosphere 34
The Bad Astronomer writes "Using a combination of Hubble and Swift observations, astronomers have apparently witnessed some of a planet's atmosphere being peeled away by a powerful stellar blast. HD 189733b orbits its star just 4 million km from the surface, and a few hours after Swift detected a big X-ray flare from the star, Hubble data revealed a big jump in hydrogen absorption as the planet transited the star. This indicates the planet's atmosphere was blasted off by the flare to the tune of a thousand tons of hydrogen per second. The planet is so hot it probably already loses a substantial amount of air to space all the time, but this spike is the first time a change in an exoplanet's atmosphere has been detected."
4 mil km (Score:5, Funny)
4 million km is roughly 0.02 AU or 1/10th the mean distance of Mercury from the Sun
It someone got that close to me, I'd let them have it too.
Re:Athmosphere or air? (Score:4, Funny)
I think it's all just hot air.
Re:4 mil km (Score:4, Funny)
Lots of us are a whole lot closer to you than that.
Re:4 mil km (Score:5, Funny)
I look forward to the day when we have lavish restaurants stationed nearby so that we can watch while we dine.