An exoplanet where it rains iron
Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet 640 light years away hot enough for iron to be vapor in the atmosphere and to condense out as rain.
The high-resolution spectrum reveals lots of iron vapor within the sliver of atmosphere undergoing the transition from day to night. However, this iron vapor signature is missing from the sliver of atmosphere transitioning from night to day. The astronomers think this happens because strong winds push iron vapor to the nightside, where it cools and condenses into clouds.
“This planet has a twilight zone at a temperature close to the iron condensation temperature,” Ehrenreich explains, “so the change in atmospheric composition (with iron vs. without iron) is occurring right where we are able to observe.”
Because the planet is a gas giant, there’s no surface onto which the droplets can fall, says coauthor Nuno Santos (University of Porto, Portugal). But the planet’s gravity likely pulls the clouds downward, enveloping the nightside in iron fog. The global winds then push the clouds and fog onto the dayside, where the vaporization-condensation cycle repeats again.
Very exotic, and alien, and I guarantee it is probably far more alien than we so far can guess.
You can find out more in this second more detailed article.
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Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet 640 light years away hot enough for iron to be vapor in the atmosphere and to condense out as rain.
The high-resolution spectrum reveals lots of iron vapor within the sliver of atmosphere undergoing the transition from day to night. However, this iron vapor signature is missing from the sliver of atmosphere transitioning from night to day. The astronomers think this happens because strong winds push iron vapor to the nightside, where it cools and condenses into clouds.
“This planet has a twilight zone at a temperature close to the iron condensation temperature,” Ehrenreich explains, “so the change in atmospheric composition (with iron vs. without iron) is occurring right where we are able to observe.”
Because the planet is a gas giant, there’s no surface onto which the droplets can fall, says coauthor Nuno Santos (University of Porto, Portugal). But the planet’s gravity likely pulls the clouds downward, enveloping the nightside in iron fog. The global winds then push the clouds and fog onto the dayside, where the vaporization-condensation cycle repeats again.
Very exotic, and alien, and I guarantee it is probably far more alien than we so far can guess.
You can find out more in this second more detailed article.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
It is interesting from logistics point that they are able to distinguish between evening and morning sides of an exo-planet and get spectra of each.
The links do not indicate the telescope system nor the spectrographic instrumentation. I did not make a payment for the whole article.
I had no problem accessing the whole article….
“The hot Jupiter crosses the face of its star from Earth’s perspective, so astronomers can take a spectrum of the starlight that passes through the planet’s atmosphere during its passes. Ehrenreich and colleagues used the ESPRESSO spectrograph mounted on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert. “ESPRESSO delivers a precision . . . never achieved before by any other spectrograph,” explains coauthor María Rosa Zapatero Osorio (Center of Astrobiology, Spain).”
We genuinely have absolutely no idea of the chemistry that occurs in this kind of environment…. As Bob says…. A truly alien world.
Phill O: I have added a link to a more detailed article about these results.
Thanks you all. Not your avergae back yard spectrograph for sure.
Here some basic metallurgist would have great fun. Conditions of oxygen, carbon and sulfur would come in to play.
This is REALLY out there, but I consider life to be entirely possible on Titan. Cold and slow, but possible.. Given the only thing we know about the needs for life is an energy gradient, could there be some sort of life that requires a super hot, metal rich atmosphere to exist? Highly unlikely I know, but we know so little about the universe I do not discount the possibility out of hand…