Astronomers have discovered a planet located less than 900 light-years away in space that is being battered by massive cyclones. The research, which is based on previous observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope, reveals that violent storms are continuously formed and destroyed due to extreme temperature fluctuations between the side of the exoplanet facing its host star and the dark side.
WASP-121b, also known as Tylos, which is the ancient Greek name for Bahrain, is so close to its star that its upper atmosphere reaches temperatures of 3,400 degrees Fahrenheit – twice as hot as a typical cremation oven. To help visualize these extreme weather conditions, a team of scientists supported by NASA and the European Space Agency has created a video that demonstrates the exoplanet’s weather patterns. The video has been slowed down to allow for a closer examination of the weather phenomena.
Credit: NASA / ESA / Quentin Changeat (ESA / STScI) / Mahdi Zamani (ESA / Hubble)
It goes without saying that Tylos is not one of the exoplanets considered as a potential backup for Earth. However, as experts continue to study weather patterns on exoplanets, this research could eventually lead to the discovery of worlds with more habitable climates.
To make this discovery, an international team of scientists collected and reprocessed data from the Hubble archives dating back to 2016, 2018, and 2019. By analyzing this data, the researchers were able to infer the chemistry, temperature, and cloud formations in the exoplanet’s atmosphere at different times. They then used computer simulations to model the drastic variations in weather.
“This gave us a detailed understanding of how the planet changes over time,” stated Quentin Changeat, a co-author of the research paper soon to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement.
The number of confirmed exoplanets, which are planets that orbit stars other than our Sun, has now reached 5,566, with over 10,000 more candidates currently under review. However, this tally only scratches the surface of the planets believed to exist in the universe. With hundreds of billions of galaxies and the high probability that most stars have at least one planet, the number of worlds in the cosmos is truly unfathomable.
Tylos is classified as an ultra-hot Jupiter, a type of exoplanet that is larger than Jupiter and orbits extremely close to its star. It completes one orbit around its star in less than 1.5 Earth days.
This peculiar planet becomes even stranger with each new study. In 2022, scientists hypothesized that the dark side of Tylos is cool enough to support metal clouds that rain liquid gems. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore suggested that the intense ultraviolet light from the host star heats the planet’s upper atmosphere, causing magnesium and iron to vaporize and escape into space as gas. Additionally, the gravitational forces from the star have distorted the planet into a football-like shape.