Interstellar Glass Fun Facts
Astronomers said they had found another blue planet a long, long way from Earth — no water world, but a scorching, hostile place where it rains glass, sideways.
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| Blue planet HD 189733b around its host star (artist’s impression) |
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists from NASA and its European counterpart, ESA, have for the first time determined the true color of an exoplanet, celestial bodies which orbit stars other than our own Sun.
They concluded that HD 189733b, a gas giant 63 light-years from Earth in the constellation Vulpecula (the Fox), was a deep cobalt blue, “reminiscent of Earth’s color as seen from space.”
“But that’s where the similarities end,” said a statement. This planet orbits very close to its host star and its atmosphere is heated to over 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.“It rains glass, sideways, in howling 4,350 miles-per-hour winds,” said the statement. The planet is one of the nearest exoplanets to Earth that can be seen crossing the face of its star, and has been intensively studied by Hubble and other telescopes.
“Measuring its color is a real first — we can actually imagine what this planet would look like if we were able to look at it directly,” said Frederic Pont of the University of Exeter, who co-wrote the paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Pont and a team measured how much light was reflected off the planet’s surface, a property known as albedo, in order to calculate its color.
HD 189733b was discovered in 2005. It is only 2.9 million miles from its parent star, so close that it is gravitationally locked. One side always faces the star and the other side is always dark.In 2007, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope measured the infrared light, or heat, from the planet, leading to one of the first temperature maps for an exoplanet. The map shows day side and night side temperatures on HD 189733b differ by about 500 degrees Fahrenheit. This should cause fierce winds to roar from the day side to the night side.
With apologies to the Weathergirls & writers of Its Raining Men:
Barometer’s getting low
According to all sources,the street’s the place to go
Cause tonight for the first time
Its gonna be badass
For the first time in history
It’s gonna start raining glass.
Its Raining Glass! Hallelujah!
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