The planet KELT-9b literally has an iron sky
20 AUGUST 2018
Iron and titanium have been foundin the atmosphere of a super-hot giant exoplanet. Ben Lewis reports.
The Gran Telescopio Canarias on Las Palma in the Canary Islands was instrumental in determining the constituents of the exoplanet's atmosphere.
DOMINIC DÄHNCKE/GETTY IMAGES
KELT-9b, one of the most unlikely planets ever discovered, has surprised astronomers yet again with the discovery that its atmosphere contains the metals iron and titanium, according to research published in the journal Nature.
The planet is truly like no other. Located around 620 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, it is known as a Hot Jupiter – which gives a hint to its nature. Nearly three times the size of Jupiter, its surface temperature tops 3780 degrees Celsius – the hottest exoplanet ever discovered. It is even hotter than the surface of some stars. In some ways it straddles the line between a star and a gas-giant exoplanet.
And it’s that super-hot temperature, created by a very close orbit to its host star, that allows the metals to become gaseous and fill the atmosphere, say the findings from a team led by Jens Hoeijmakers of the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
On the night of 31 July 2017, as KELT-9b passed across the face of its star, the HARPS-North spectrograph attached to the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, located the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma, began watching. The telescope recorded changes in colour in the planet’s atmosphere, the result of chemicals with different light-filtering properties.
More:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/the-planet-kelt-9b-literally-has-an-iron-sky