Scientists discover giant planet with stratosphere

Scientists have found that the distant planet WASP-33b has a stratosphere, making it the first extrasolar planet that has this layer of the atmosphere.

 

The study was published in the journal Astrophysical Journal. 
 

The discovery was made using the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3.

 

The stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere that absorbs majority of the ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun, preventing it from reaching the surface of Earth. The higher up you go into the stratosphere, the hotter it gets because of the ultraviolet radiation absorbed by the ozone in the stratosphere.

 

“Some of these planets are so hot in their upper atmospheres, they’re essentially boiling off into space,” said study co-author Avi Mandell, planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a press release.

“At these temperatures, we don’t necessarily expect to find an atmosphere that has molecules that can lead to these multilayered structures,” Mandell said.

 

Stratospheres have been also found in other planets inside our solar system, but instead of ozone, they have hydrocarbons. However, most known exoplanets—planets outside of our solar system—are too hot for ozone and hydrocarbons to survive.

 

The researchers in this study found that the exoplanet WASP-33b, which is has a mass 4.5 times that of Jupiter, has a stratosphere containing titanium oxide which does the same job as Earth’s ozone.

 

“Understanding the links between stratospheres and chemical compositions is critical to studying atmospheric processes in exoplanets,” said co-author Nikku Madhusudhan of the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. “Our finding marks a key breakthrough in this direction.” — RSJ, GMA News