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Hot exoplanet with glowing water atmosphere found
In a first, scientists have detected glowing water molecules in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system, implying that the exoplanet has a strong stratosphere.The planet, WASP-121b, located approximately 900 light years from Earth, is a gas giant exoplanet commonly referred to as a \"hot Jupiter.\"
Washington : In a first, scientists have detected glowing water molecules in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system, implying that the exoplanet has a strong stratosphere.The planet, WASP-121b, located approximately 900 light years from Earth, is a gas giant exoplanet commonly referred to as a "hot Jupiter."
Finding glowing water molecules on the planet's atmosphere, however, may not men detecting signs of alien life as its stratosphere - a layer of atmosphere where temperature increases with higher altitudes - is hot enough to boil iron.
"This result is exciting because it shows that a common trait of most of the atmospheres in our solar system -- a warm stratosphere -- also can be found in exoplanet atmospheres," said Mark Marley, study co-author based at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.
"We can now compare processes in exoplanet atmospheres with the same processes that happen under different sets of conditions in our own solar system," Marley said.
The discovery reported in the the journal Nature was made using NASA's Hubble space telescope. To study the gas giant's stratosphere, scientists used spectroscopy to analyse how the planet's brightness changed at different wavelengths of light.
Water vapour in the planet's atmosphere, for example, behaves in predictable ways in response to certain wavelengths of light, depending on the temperature of the water.
At cooler temperatures, water vapour blocks light from beneath it. But at higher temperatures, the water molecules glow.
The water molecules in the atmosphere of WASP-121b give off radiation as they lose energy, but it is in the form of infrared light, which the human eye is unable to detect.
WASP-121b has a greater mass and radius than Jupiter, making it much puffier.But while Jupiter revolves around our Sun once every 12 years, WASP-121b has an orbital period of just 1.3 days.
This exoplanet is so close to its star that if it got any closer, the star's gravity would start ripping it apart.This close proximity also means that the top of the atmosphere is heated to a blazing hot 2,500 degrees Celsius - the temperature at which iron exists in gas rather than solid form.
