The powerful vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has allowed astronomers to study for the first time the layer-cake structure of the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. Hubble discovered a dense upper layer of hot hydrogen gas where the super-hot planet's atmosphere is bleeding off into space.

The planet, designated HD 209458b, is unlike any world in our solar system. It orbits so close to its star and gets so hot that its gas is streaming into space, making the planet appear to have a comet-like tail. This new research reveals the layer in the planet's upper atmosphere where the gas becomes so heated it escapes, like steam rising from a boiler.

"The layer we studied is actually a transition zone where the temperature skyrockets from about 1,340 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 Kelvin) to about 25,540 degrees (15,000 Kelvin), which is hotter than the Sun," said Gilda Ballester of the University of Arizona in Tucson, leader of the research team. "With this detection we see the details of how a planet loses its atmosphere."

The findings by Ballester, David K. Sing of the University of Arizona and the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, and Floyd Herbert of the University of Arizona will appear Feb. 1 in a letter to the journal Nature.

The Hubble data show how intense ultraviolet radiation from the host star heats the gas in the upper atmosphere, inflating the atmosphere like a balloon. The gas is so hot that it moves very fast and escapes the planet's gravitational pull at a rate of 10,000 tons a second, more than three times the rate of water flowing over Niagara Falls. The planet, however, will not wither away any time soon. Astronomers estimate its lifetime is more than 5 billion years.

The scorched planet is a big puffy version of Jupiter. In fact, it is called a "hot Jupiter," a large gaseous planet orbiting very close to its parent star. Jupiter might even look like HD 209458b if it were close to the Sun, Ballester said.

The planet completes an orbit around its star every 3.5 days. It orbits 4.7 million miles from its host, 20 times closer than the Earth is to the Sun. By comparison, Mercury, the closest planet to our Sun, is 10 times farther away from the Sun than HD 209458b is from its star. Unlike HD 209458b, Mercury is a small ball of iron with a rocky crust.

"This planet's extreme atmosphere could yield insights into the atmospheres of other hot Jupiters," Ballester said.

Although HD 209458b does not have a twin in our solar system, it has plenty of relatives beyond our solar system. About 10 to 15 percent of the more than 200 known extrasolar planets are hot Jupiters. A recent Hubble survey netted 16 hot Jupiter candidates in the central region of our Milky Way Galaxy, suggesting that there may be billions of these gas-giant star huggers in our galaxy.

HD 209458b is one of the most intensely studied extrasolar planets because it is one of the few known alien worlds that can be seen passing in front of, or transiting, its star, causing the star to dim slightly. In fact, the gas giant is the first such alien world discovered to transit its star. HD 209458b is 150 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus.

The planet's transits allow astronomers to analyze the structure and chemical makeup of the gas giant's atmosphere by sampling the starlight that passes through it. The effect is similar to finding fingerprints on a window by watching how sunlight filters through the glass.

Previous Hubble observatoins revealed oxygen, carbon, and sodium in the planet's atmosphere, as well as a huge hydrogen upper atmosphere with a comet-like tail. These landmark studies provided the first detection of the chemical makeup of an extrasolar planet's atmosphere.

Additional observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope captured the infrared glow from the planet's hot atmosphere.

The new study by Ballester and her team is based on an analysis of archival observations made in 2003 with Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph by David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. Ballester's team analyzed spectra from hot hydrogen atoms in the planet's upper atmosphere, a region not studied by Charbonneau's group.

Wow! It is amasing that they were able to gain so much informaton from our view so far away. And the fact they can actually measure the amount of Gases escaping, is outstanding.
Now , I ask these questions;
By this study how will it help us on our tiny planet?
Was this done as part of a plan to look for a possable habitable planet for us ( the worlds people ) in some far future?
How does all the escaping gases from this Jupiter type planet effect other planets within its own solar system?
I would like to know how erratic is its orbit, I mean We now most keep some type of pattern, but with the losss of these gases in such huge amounts, does it throw itself of in more of a wobble orbit or does it stay constant?


Leaves a lot to think about.

Also could be something NEW to add to the games. (Hint Hint)

I know we can only guess, but I would enjoy reading possable answers and even more questions on this.

I don t know how this study will help us Evilhavk, but I know this is blast for scienctific paradigma, all knowledge about forming of planets is useless now. You know rocky planets close to sun, gas giants far away...

and btw Happy birthday

Do you really think it is useless? I wonder if it may give us even better information. like where to all those gases go? adn do they say adhere to another planets gravity field and become a part of it?

lots to think on for sure. but am glad you posted this.

Useless is maybe heavy word but, this decovery is proof that you can t create working theory(forming planets) with knowledge of one solar system ( 0.0000000000000000000000000001% of whole universe)

Gases flow to Sun because is closest body to this type of planet, I guess!

It's been a year and a half I think since I took an astronomy class (hey, it beat geology class), but at the time the model was that these hot jupiters still formed outside the frost line but for some reason or another migrated inwards towards their parent star, destroying all the inner planets in the process (or flinging them wildly out in to deep space -- that would sure suck for a life-filled planet with aspirations for galactic domination).. I'm not sure why they migrate inwards though.. any physics or astronomy majors here?

Cool stuff from Hubble though, they better squeeze the old girl for all she's worth while they still can! I wouldn't of guessed they'd be able to get that level of detailed information from it. Makes me look forward to TPF and the next round of telescopes even more

It's stuff like this that REALLY makes you sad about the current state of Hubble's systems - in case anyone didn't know, Hubble suffered a massive short circuit a few weeks ago that resulted in several of its cameras literally blowing up.

Oh well, "only" 19 months until it is repaired and upgraded with more powerful cameras...

If I was running NASA, I would have made Hubble the absolute priority - even more so than the International Space Station. I honestly think the Hubble is that important. Ok, the future James Webb Telescope will be a better, more powerful Telescope, but it will always be a mere upgrade. Hubble is THE Telescope that opened our eyes to thw wonders that are out there. It is the Telescope that gave us the amazing deep field images and the Eagle Nebula, (AKA "The Pillars of the Stars") and whilst I don't doubt there are many, many, many more wonderous things out there, without Hubble, it just won't be the same.

The loss of the Hubble is like losing an eye - you don't need it to survive, but it makes life so much better that you couldn't imagine living without it.

Yeah, I agree, Mattress.. James Webb isn't optical, is it? Isn't it X-Ray or radio-wave or something like that? Scientists can, I admit, get good science from non-optical telescopes, but their budget depends on making us guys happy with sweet optical real-color pictures that our human eyes understand I'd be sad to lose Hubble entirely before something like Terrestrial Planet Finder gets launched. I'd heard about it having some problems, but man, I didnt know it was that bad.. that bites!

My support for ISS more or less comes down to honor at this point, lol.. We (USA) have made commitments to our international partners (JAXA, ESA), and I feel like we should lead by example and hold our end up as best we can, hopefully to bond us together better. Thats about it though.

I figure, if Bush put all that money he spent on His war into NASA instead, we would have both the space Station up and running already, and would have fixed the hubble for the last time.

I heard on our news that IF the hubble were to be fixed this would be it. As it is just to costly to mess with anylonger. But then again, I do not take everything thats posted on the news stations to be accurate either. Although I cannot not confirm this, I recall that NASA's budget was to be slashed yet again this year. If this keeps up there will be NO space program left to do anything! Then again I guess congress needs the money to pay all the kickbacks they offer the Oil companies to keep the refineries running.

If all the Governments leaders would pull thier collective heads out of thier butts, and get together, we could be sooooo much farther along toward achieving the goal of exploration in space and maybe put an end to all the really stupid things like Greed.

Too bad it wont happen!

and another philosophical essay, keep up winter, it gets better every time

I don't know how it'll end up, I havent been reading much the past couple weeks in detail (been busy), but the budget situation is something like this:

NASA was promised by Bush a 3% annual increase (above inflation indexing) to help cover 'VSE', ie, the new space ship, Moon, and Mars.

That was the promise.. of course.. what happened has been different..

Fiscal year 2006 saw a smaller increase than promised if I recall, which along with typical government budget over-runs, has hurt.

And on the 19th, bout a week ago now I guess, FY07 was more or less laid out. NASA had been counting on the 3% increase to get things done, so when a small number of projects got the ax and the overall budget was held the same, it felt like a $545M budget cut. "While I would have liked to have increased funding for NASA, there was simply not enough extra funding available for us to do so." The budget plays a shell game that helps offset it by shifting funds from some areas to others deemed important, and it does give some increases to some key projects, but make no mistake; it's going to hurt.

FY08 talk is being floated already, with Dem's dropping the headline number on the liberal media (woops, I mean balanced) to try to make Bush's smaller budget request sound almost like a radical increase. That doesn't bode well for our friends at NASA.. The requested budget has it's obligatory 3.1% along with a request, in light of Congress dictating what NASA can spend its money on, for Congress to give it some freedom to spend how it feels it should in order to try to compensate for the budget beating NASA has received.

That much I know, but not reading much lately, I don't have any sense for how it'll end up. I have seen the response in general to Bush's FY08 proposal, and to hear old Kennedy yelling, screaming, hooting and hollaring you'd think Bush had taken Medicare out behind the shed at shot him. If history is a lesson, they'll undue the cuts to the welfare system and stick it to the rest of the federal budget, and that might include NASA. Or maybe they'll do like they have with this surge thing; continue to whine endlessly and end up rubber-stamping swaths of the FY08 budget, complete with NASA's increase.

I hope they give NASA what it deserves, but.. I won't be getting my hopes up..



Hmm. I'm going to go read this SW book I picked up the day, Outbound Flight (I <3 Timothy Zahn), and make myself feel better.

It seems like the big name Dems in congress are only fiscally minded when

a) A republican is president
b) When something does not involve pet pork projects
c) Something worth spending money on (like NASA) needs more cash

Except you have to cancel the NASA part.. Leaving us up the paddle without a creek. lol

The space program and everything else suffers now that both the Democrats and the Republicans have demonstrated gross fiscal irresponsibility.

I think nasa should be given a lot more attention than it is. It would be nice if funding for NASA were not made a political issue. I guess politics knows no bounds.

I'd like to know about more planets / systems, that are strange or unusual to us normal folks.

Also , it would help if the NASA folks would kinda make it so the general layman can understand what thier writing. I mean, I showed this stuff to my wife and a friend and they were way lost. I have to explain it to them.
LOL I kow the Guys at NASA have 30 PHD's down one arm and up the other but they gotta think about the basic folks who are interested but are not educated tounderstand all the techino babble.. lol

I'm not that bright, but I do get it figured out.. lol