#gj 1214b

[blasteffect]

GJ 1214B !

The Ocean Planet, located approximately 40 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus. GJ 1214B is a super-Earth nicknamed the "ocean planet as it is mostly made up of water.

The water world was discovered in December 2009 by the MEarth Project, a Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics initiative.

The discovery was made using the transit method, where astronomers detected a slight dimming of light as GJ 1214B passed in front of its host star.

The water world has an Atmosphere made up of Thick hydrogen-helium.

Astronomers revealed that GJ 1214B is composed of Water, ammonia, and methane ices with a possible rocky core.

GJ 1214B offers valuable insights into exoplanet formation, despite its inhospitable environment. As researchers makes more discoveries about this water world, I will keep you informed.

Credits: NASA, ESA, ESO, Science Photo Library.

[mindblowingscience]

The James Webb Space Telescope reveals a mysterious planet to be weirdly shiny

Astronomers pointed the James Webb Space Telescope at a common kind of planet that's bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. What they saw wasn't what they expected.

An enigmatic, cloud-enshrouded planet that has puzzled astronomers for years turns out to be less hot than expected – and surprisingly shiny.

That's what the James Webb Space Telescope revealed when it peered at a so-called mini-Neptune that astronomers have been trying to understand ever since it was first discovered around another star over a decade ago, according to a new report published by the journal Nature.

Our own solar system has nothing like this planet, called GJ 1214b. It's bigger than the rocky planets like Earth, but still smaller than any of our system's ice or gas giants.

And yet studies show that such planets – often called super-Earths or mini-Neptunes – are incredibly common in our galaxy.

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[imagine-exoplanets]

[thenewenlightenmentage]

Cloudy skies on nearby super-Earth

Filtered starlight reveals an otherworldly chemical haze.

One of the best-studied nearby extrasolar planets — a body just a little larger than Earth — is swaddled in alien clouds, researchers have found. It is the smallest and most Earth-like world yet to yield the secrets of its atmosphere. Another study has found tantalizing hints of clouds on a larger, Neptune-sized world. The pair of discoveries, reported today in Nature, suggests that clouds may envelop many exoplanets.

“We always knew the clouds must be there for some planets, but now we have a wave of results telling us that clouds are actually very common,” says Heather Knutson, a planetary astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and lead author of the second paper.

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[thenewenlightenmentage]

Mystery Alien Planets Confound Astronomers

"We don't really know what they are," said Björn Benneke, a graduate student in astronomy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology referring to intriguing exoplanets found that are bigger than our rocky, oceanic Earth but smaller than cold, gas-shrouded Uranus and Neptune. "They can be a scaled-down version of the giant planets in our solar system, a scaled-up version of terrestrial planets like Earth, or something completely different."

This mysterious class of in-between planets—alternatively dubbed super-Earths or mini-Neptunes—confounds scientists because nothing like them exists as a basis for comparison in our solar system.

Benneke is co-author of a paper accepted by the Astrophysical Journal that attempts to solve this vexing riddle. Based on numerical computer models, he developed an observational strategy that would let astronomers distinguish between two very different types of atmospheres associated with these planets. Learning about their atmospheres will speak to the overall nature of these heretofore unknowable worlds with masses ranging up to about 10 times that of Earth. (Uranus and Neptune have 14 and 17 Earth-masses, respectively.)

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[thenewenlightenmentage]

Super-Earth’s Probable Water Atmosphere Revealed In Blue Light

Playing with the filters on a telescope can show us amazing things. In a recent case, Japanese astronomers looked at the star Gilese 1214 in blue light and watched its “super-Earth” planet (Gliese 1214 b, or GJ 1214 b) passing across the surface from the viewpoint of Earth. The result — a probable detection of water in the planet’s atmosphere.

Observations with the Subaru Telescope using a blue filter revealed the atmosphere does not preferentially scatter any light. If the Rayleigh scattering had been observed, this would have shown hydrogen in the atmosphere, researchers said. (On Earth, Rayleigh scattering of the atmosphere makes the sky blue.) Continue Reading

[clairebrankin]

Digital collage for the new water planet, GJ 1214b. Planet is constructed entirely from images of water and ice. The red dwarf sun is cut from a red leaf with water drops on it. There is also a variety of transparent whirlpools in the space background for texture. 

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2107544,00.html

[thiagitto-blog]

O telescópio espacial Hubble, das agências espaciais americana e europeia, descobriu uma nova classe de planeta: um mundo de água coberto por uma atmosfera espessa e fumegante, menor do que Urano, mas maior do que a Terra. O trabalho foi aceito para publicação no periódico Astrophysical Journal. Esse tipo de planeta nunca havia sido observado.

GJ 1214b foi descoberto em 2009, mas só agora os cientistas conseguiram confirmar detalhes sobre a atmosfera do planeta. Em 2010, outro grupo de cientistas realizou medições e descobriu que ela poderia ser formada por vapor de água ou nuvens. Agora, a equipe utilizou a câmera infravermelha do Hubble para confirmar que a atmosfera de GJ 1214b era formada por uma espessa e densa camada de vapor de água.

Fonte: Veja