1500 degrees and unprecedented storms – Telegraaf.nl

WASHINGTON –

The wind screams it with the speed of sound, about 1200 kilometers per hour. The temperature is over 1500 degrees above zero, “hot enough to melt iron.” Very hospitable, it is not on the planet WASP-43b. Scientists have mapped the weather there. That’s as accurate as done before with a planet in another galaxy, the researchers reported

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Photo: AFP

The research was done with the Hubble Space Telescope. The planet is about the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, but weighs about twice as much. That’s because the planet is composed of dense clouds of gas. “There is nothing on the surface to see, such as oceans or continents,” said the American space agency NASA.

The planet is very close to its star. A by-pass takes only 19 hours. The earth is doing one year on. Few planets with such a short rotation known. One side of WASP-43b is constantly facing the star and bathed in light. The other side is dark, like our moon. On the dark side of the planet, it’s still 500 degrees above zero.

The heat is all the water evaporates on the planet. It’s in the atmosphere, so it is measured from the earth. That can help scientists to find out how such large planets form and evolve out. “Water plays an important role in the formation of giant planets, comets because the young planets bombing. They provide plenty of water and other molecules that we can observe, “they write. In our solar system that can not. In a similar planets like Jupiter and Saturn, the water namely frozen and deeply sunk in the gas. Satellites can not see it

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