A strange black as coal, darkest known planet was discovered in the galaxy.
The world in question is a Jupiter-sized giant known as Three-2b. NASA's Kepler probe detected that goes around the sun as GSC 03549-02811 yellow star about 750 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Draco.
The researchers found that the gas giant reflects less than 1 percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it darker than any planet or moon seen so far. [The strange alien planets]
"It's ridiculous how the planet is dark, how is foreign compared to what we have in our solar system," lead study author David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SPACE.com. "It's darker than the black piece of charcoal, black acrylic paint you could paint. It is strange how this massive planet has become so absorbing all the light that the" successes. "
Viewing Jupiter is the cloud is white and red stripes, which is more than one third of the sunlight reaches, Tres-2b seems to be missing reflective clouds of super-heated due to its atmosphere is more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (980 degrees), because of which only 3.1 million miles (5000000 km) from.
"However, it is completely pitch black," co-author David Spiegel, of Princeton University said in a statement. "It 'so hot that it radiates a faint red glow, the most ardent coals or electric heating coils."
The researchers suggest that light-absorbing chemicals such as sodium and potassium oxide, titanium vaporized or gaseous planet's atmosphere may help explain why it is so dark. But none of these can not fully explain why the world is so thinly veiled as it is.
"It's a mystery what's causing it to be so dark," says Kipping. "It is a good chance it is a chemical that we have not yet thought of."
Astronomers believe TRES-2b is tidally locked like our moon, so that one side of the planet always faces the star. This would lead to phase change in orbit around a star like our moon waxes and wanes from new Crescent to complete, causing the overall brightness of the star plus the planet to vary a little more time.
"By combining the impressive accuracy of Kepler's observations more than 50 orbits, detected the slightest difference in the brightness of an exoplanet ever - only 6 parts per million," says Kipping. "In other words, Kepler was able to directly detect visible light from the planet itself."
These very small variations in the light showed that the TRES-2b is incredibly dark. World would have shown a depth greater than the phase of the cycle changed.
Despite TrES-2b is currently the dark planet known, like worlds around other stars surely await discovery, the researchers said. For now, it reinforces the idea that our solar system is not as typical as we thought, with an extraordinary variety of worlds in our galaxy full potential.
Further studies on more than 1200 detected Kepler potential worlds on other planets could become unusually dark. The satellite, launched in March 2009, is scheduled to run until at least November 2012.
"If Kepler gets an expanded mission, which we hope will be a great advantage to this type of research," says Kipping.
Spiegel Dresden and detailed their findings in a study accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
0 comments:
Post a Comment