Astronomers have found an exoplanet about 1,360 light-years away, very close to its star, and its clouds consist of vaporized rock. The planet is called WASP-178b, and it orbits WASP-178, a young, white star twice the mass of the Sun, in an extremely short orbit of just 3.3 days. At this close, temperatures rise in the gaseous world, so hot that it is classified as a “superhot Jupiter,” perhaps the most dangerous type of exoplanet we know.
A new study of the weather in this outer world has identified, for the first time, silicon monoxide (SiO) in the planet’s atmosphere, giving us new insight into these truly alien worlds.
“We still don’t have a good understanding of the weather in different planetary environments,” said astrophysicist David Singh of Johns Hopkins University.
Hot Jupiters in particular are very cool and ready to be studied. As the name suggests, these worlds are gas giants, like Jupiter, but they are also very hot; Because it orbits in very close orbits with its stars, some of them wander in less than a day.
It poses an interesting mystery: it could not have formed in its current orbit; Because gravity, radiation, and intense stellar winds should prevent the gas from clumping together.