The blazing - red-hot exoplanet WASP-33b is more than four time the muckle of Jupiter , and its close orbit to its star heat up the surface to over 3,000oC ( over 5432oF ) . Now , astronomers using NASA ’s Hubble Space Telescope have detected a stratosphere around the major planet . This main atmospherical layer contains molecules that absorb ultraviolet and visible light from its boniface genius – protecting the major planet like a sunblock of sorts .
“ Some of these planet are so hot in their upper atmospheres , they ’re essentially moil off into space,”Avi Mandell of NASA ’s Goddard Space Flight Centersays in anews release . “ At these temperatures , we do n’t necessarily look to find an atmosphere that has speck that can lead to these multilayered structures . ”
On Earth , the stratosphere sit atop the turbulent troposphere where conditions happens . This level stretch from the ground ( where it ’s warmer ) up to where most clouds top out ( where it ’s coolheaded ) . Temperature in the stratosphere , on the other manus , increases with EL . This so - call temperature inversion bechance when ozone in the stratosphere take up UV radiation syndrome from the Lord’s Day and foreclose it from reaching us on the control surface . That ultraviolet radiation is then converted into estrus that warm the stratosphere . Similar inversions are found on Jupiter and Saturn , though theirs are due to hydrocarbon alternatively of ozone . Well , neither of these can survive at the crazy hot temperature of most exoplanets we know about , so researcher were n’t sure if stratosphere do exist for planets outside our solar system of rules .
But now , Mandell and colleagues report the find of a temperature sexual inversion in the standard atmosphere of WASP-33b , and they retrieve it ’s because of titanium oxide . Thefindingswere published inThe Astrophysical Journalthis week .
The researchers analyzed observation from Hubble ’s broad Field Camera 3 , which captures in the about - infrared region . When light from the exoplanet dipped as it passed behind its parent star ( pictured above ) , the squad was able to compare emissions from water and gases at dissimilar altitude . Higher up , the temperature is about 3,300oC ( 6,000oF ) , and lower down , the temperature is about 1,650oC ( 3,000oF ) . Without a stratosphere , temperatures would cool at mellow altitude .
atomic number 22 oxide is one of a few compounds that can strongly occupy visible and UV radiation while stay in a gaseous form . That ’s plausibly how it stays in an atmosphere that red-hot .
