Tracking the Weather On an Exoplanet

schwit1 writes: Scientists have begun gathering increasingly detailed information about the atmosphere and weather on the exoplanet HD189733B, 63 light years away with an orbit that produces a transit every 2.2 days. The temperature appears to rise with increasing altitude, reaching 3,000 degrees at the top of the atmosphere. There are also strong winds blowing from the cold to the hot side of the planet.

Small Correction

[anzha]

An exoplanet should NOT be HD189733B. A capital B would denote a star. A lower case b denotes a planet. And, yes, you can have a HD XXXXBb. Alpha Centauri Bb is one of those. Its an S type circumbinary system. For those who are interested, I have a blog [blogspot.com] which links to the exoplanet papers are they come out, whether its from arxiv or one of the scientific journals.

Re:

[Ryanrule]

Oh come on, we are just starting at this, and already its a clusterfuck.

Re:Small Correction

[anzha]

If you mean 'just started' to mean 'for 20+ years now,' sure. The nomenclature for stars has been around for far, far longer. Exoplanets are given their b-c-d-e etc designation - never a, btw - in the order of discovery, not the order in the planetary system as well. Its not a clusterfuck. Its just a different discipline's rules and they've been consistent for a generation at least.

Re:

[Ryanrule]

on the scale of the things we are classifying, we are nanoseconds in.

Re:

[anzha]

From that POV, our existence is about one second in. at the most.

Re:

[paiute]

Well I hope you are happy now. It is going to take 63 years for the correction to reach HD189733B, er HD189733b.

Re: Small Correction

[ediron2]

Why never 'a'? Have checked a few online sources and can't find the reason.

Re:

[gstoddart]

My guess, the star is "a", the number is the catalog name of the star, and the things which orbit it are derived from that.

Re:

[anzha]

yup. I'm afraid the blackhole made by LHC ate your QP doll though. Sorry.

Re:

[sconeu]

Alpha Centauri B Flat?

Re:

[anzha]

nah. Alpha Centauri A tried to shoot the eye out of Alpha Centauri.

Re:

[l0ungeb0y]

Well, forcing it to trade-in it's Hummer for a tax credit to buy a new Tesla, Prius or Leaf would be a start -- also, banning sodas, severely taxing and restricting smoking and requiring fast food franchises to offer healthy alternatives can't hurt.

Wondering...

[drooling-dog]

...how long it will be before the climate on HD189733b becomes a political issue.

If you thought NOAA Has a hard time ....

[pollarda]

If you think NOAA has it hard now, just imagine what a bitch it will be to provide accurate 10 day weather reports for an exoplanet 64 light years away given 64 year old data.

And j ust so you know, I'm going to drive my SUV no matter what they tell me I might be doing to the weather patterns of some random exoplanet.

Weather forecast

[rossdee]

Not going to be very usefil knowing what its going to be like tomorrow when that was 63 years ago

Notable point in history

[Okian Warrior]

Every once in awhile I like to mentally stop and take a look around to see where we are. I think this is a good moment for that.

Notice that we are collecting data on the weather patterns of a planet not in our solar system.

We live in the future.

Re:

[stealth_finger]

No they aren't. They are just doing guesses based on what they think the temperature is at various points of the globe. They can't detect the "winds blowing from the cold to hot side". They are just guessing that they are there because they think there is a temperature differential.

They seem to think this thing is tidally locked, so with the same side always facing the star it's all but guaranteed there's a temperature differential.

Bullshit

[stealth_finger]

how can they possibly tell the weather on a thing they only know is there and can barely see. All I can think is models will give you a best guess based on a bunch of assumptions but is it not a bit much to say the weather is this.

We just covered this paper in our class last week

[StupendousMan]

I'm co-teaching a graduate course on exoplanets, and we talked about this paper in one of our meetings last week. Here's the link to our discussion of "spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres:"

      http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/e... [rit.edu]

You can read all our materials at

      http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/e... [rit.edu]

Enjoy!