Exoplant Clouds

Using data from multiple telescopes, scientists have detected clouds on a gas giant exoplanet some 520 light-years from Earth. So detailed were the observations, they even discerned the altitude of the clouds and the structure of the upper atmosphere, with the greatest precision yet.

It's work that will help us better understand exoplanet atmospheres – and look for worlds that may have conditions hospitable to life, or biosignatures in their spectra. We're also getting closer to making weather reports for distant alien worlds.

The exoplanet in question is WASP-127b, discovered in 2016. It's a hot and therefore puffy beast, orbiting so close to its star that its year is just 4.2 days. The exoplanet clocks in at 1.3 times the size of Jupiter, but only 0.16 times Jupiter's mass.

This means that its atmosphere is somewhat thin and tenuous – perfect for trying to analyze its contents based on the light that streams through it from the exoplanet's host star.

To do this, a team of researchers led by astronomer Romain Allart of the Université de Montréal in Canada combined infrared data from the space-based Hubble Space Telescope, and optical data from the ESPRESSO instrument on the ground-based Very Large Telescope, to peer into different altitudes of WASP-127b's atmosphere.

"First, as found before in this type of planet, we detected the presence of sodium, but at a much lower altitude than we were expecting," Allart said.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...