2023-10-22 06:00:08
The rocky exoplanet 55 Cancri e, one of the first “super-Earths” discovered, has always been a mystery to astronomers. Its inconsistent light emissions might finally have an explanation.
This illustration shows a possible scenario for 55 Cancri e, a hot and rocky exoplanet almost twice as wide as Earth. Data from the Spitzer Space Telescope is the largest infrared telescope launched by NASA. These… ) from NASA show that the planet (A planet is a celestial body orbiting around the Sun or another star…) experiences variations in temperature (Temperature is a physical quantity measured using a thermometer and…) extremes.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Located regarding 40 light years from Earth, 55 Cancri e is eight times more massive than our planet. It is very close to its star, less than 2% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, completing a complete orbit. in just 17 hours. These extreme conditions make its observation difficult.
The recent study suggests that volcanoes on this hot planet regularly emit gases that form an atmosphere. However, this atmosphere quickly dissipates, leaving the planet “bald” until the next eruption.
The most enigmatic phenomenon concerns the exoplanet’s transit signal. Sometimes no visible light signal is emitted from the planet, while other times the signal is strong. In infrared (Infrared radiation (IR) is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength…), the signal is always present but varies in intensity. According to the researchers, this behavior might be explained by the instability of the atmosphere of 55 Cancri e. When the atmosphere disappears, only the infrared signal from the hot surface is detected.
To validate this hypothesis, the James Webb space telescope might measure the pressure and temperature of the exoplanet’s atmosphere, thus making it possible to check whether an atmosphere is constantly present or not.
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