Saudi News Planet “Hot Jupiter” reveals new secret

Saudi News Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in America have discovered the first Jupiter-like planet without clouds and haze in its visible atmosphere.

The named gas giant (WASP-62b) was first detected in 2012, but its atmosphere has not been closely studied, an addition to the new study, published this month in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“For my work, I worked on the characterization of exoplanets, taking pictures of the planets discovered to know the nature of their atmospheres,” explains Manaza Alam, a graduate student at the Center for Astrophysics who led the study, in a report published on the centre’s website on Friday.

WASP-62b, known as “Hot Jupiter,” is located 575 light years from Earth and is about half the mass of Jupiter in our solar system.

However, unlike Jupiter, which takes nearly 12 years to orbit the sun, WASP-62b rotates around its star in just 4.5 days, and this proximity to the star makes it extremely hot, hence the name “Hot Jupiter”. “”.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, the researcher recorded data and observations of the planet using spectroscopy, studying electromagnetic radiation to help discover chemical elements. The researcher specifically observed the planet as it traversed 3 times in front of its host star and observed visible light, which can detect the presence of sodium and potassium in the planet’s air atmosphere.

“I admit that at first I was not very excited about this planet, but once I started looking at the data I got excited,” Alam says.

And while there is no evidence for potassium, the presence of sodium was remarkably evident on the planet, and the research team were able to see all of the sodium absorption lines or their complete fingerprints.

The researcher explains that clouds or haze in the atmosphere would mask the full signature of sodium, and astronomers can only provide small clues to its presence.

“This is solid proof that we see a clear, cloudless and fog free atmosphere,” he says.

Cloudless planets are extremely rare. Astronomers estimate that less than 7% of exoplanets have a clear atmosphere, according to recent research.

The first exoplanet known to have a clean atmosphere was discovered in 2018, called WASP-96b, and is classified as a hot planet of Saturn.