Astronomers have discovered a supersonic wind on a giant gas planet located more than 500 light-years from Earth.
In a study published Tuesday in Astronomy & Astrophysics, astronomers who have been studying the planet's weather since 2016 said the results show it is “the fastest wind ever measured in a jet orbiting the planet.”
“This is something we haven't seen before,” said Lisa Nordmann, a scientist at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and lead author of the study.
The team said it had mapped the weather on the planet WASP-127b with the help of The CRIRES+ tool — which consists simultaneously of a spectrograph and an adaptive optics system — at st The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.
The findings showed that WASP-127b, which is slightly larger than Jupiter but has only a fraction of its mass, was moving at a jet wind speed nearly six times the planet's rotation speed. By comparison, the fastest wind ever measured in the Solar System was found on Neptune, moving at just 0.5 km per second, scientists say.
European Southern Observatory
The team mapped the planet's surprisingly complex weather system by tracking the speed of molecules – they observed a double peak that indicates one side of the atmosphere is moving towards us and the other away from us at high speeds. This indicates that a powerful current of wind is moving around the planet.
The researchers concluded that a powerful jet wind around the equator could explain this unexpected result and show that the planet has complex weather systems like Earth and other planets in our solar system.
“Understanding the dynamics of these exoplanets helps us investigate mechanisms such as heat redistribution and chemical processes, improving our understanding of planet formation and potentially shedding light on the origins of our own solar system,” says David Kont of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Germany and co-author of the article.
From discovered exoplanets so far only a few dozen have been directly photographedaccording to NASA. Scientists hope that further research will reveal when the young planets formed in their current location or migrated from somewhere else – and how they might interact with each other.