Exoplanetary Weather
In our Solar system, only Earth and Titan have weather systems, Water and Methane respectively. Detecting such systems on planets circling other stars would seem almost impossible, but for some time Astronomers have been gleaning the spectral data of the small amount of star light that passes through the atmosphere of a planet as it makes it’s way to Earth.
The hope is, one day, we’ll be able to detect weather systems on Earth like rocky planets, but for the time being, we are limited to huge Jupiter sized planets that circle near their star, often referred to as hot Jupiters.
One such planet is Wasp 31b, it had originally been scanned by Hubble back in 2011, but a team of Astronomers from the University of Groningen, the University of Edinburgh, and SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research took another look at the data from 2011, and were able to detect an atmosphere, but more so, they suspect, the first exoplanetary weather system.
The planet (being a hot Jupiter) is by definition hot, and has a temperature of around 1120′c in the atmosphere, so Water and Methane are out ! The chemical detected was Chromium Hydride, and it just so happens that at the temperature and pressure is right on the edge between being a gas and a liquid.
We are some way off from detecting a water system, however water was detected in the atmosphere of this planet too, so it’s only a matter of time for our ability to capture more data, and refine our limits of detection such that smaller rocky planets and their atmosphere’s can also be detected, but it will probably require better telescopes than Hubble to do this, but they are coming.
Source : http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/chromium-hydride-atmosphere-hot-jupiter-wasp-31b-09323.html