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Astronomers have shown for the first time that an extremely hot planet throws metals in space.
It sounds spectacular: a planet throwing metals into space. Researchers around David Sing of Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) were able to observe it with the Hubble Space Telescope.
For the first time, astronomers were able to detect clouds of magnesium and iron gas around the WASP-121b exoplanet. They now report this in the journal "Astronomical Journal".
Planet in the shape of a football
The planet revolves around a sun in the constellation Puppis in the southern sky. It was discovered as early as 2015. The planet is about 900 light-years from Earth and about one-third more mbad than Jupiter, the largest planet in our system.
The exoplanet rotates so closely around its original star that its gravity almost tears it. The planet is lengthened, so that its shape reminds that of an American football.
Incredibly hot
Its upper star is heated by the near star to over 2500 degrees Celsius. It's much hotter than on other known exoplanets. So hot that metals such as iron and magnesium do not condense in the deepest layers of the atmosphere, but can escape as gases in the space.
The planet belongs by its mbad and its temperature to the clbad of hot Jupiter. Such metals have also been observed in other hot Jupiter, but only in the lower atmosphere, explained Sing in a statement from the Baltimore Space Telescope Science Institute.
"You do not know if they escape or not," he says. "At WASP-121b, we see magnesium and iron gas so far away from the planet that they are not bound by gravity." According to the researchers, this is the first evidence that an exoplanet throws such metals into space.
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