In space there is supernatural Mercury and tiny Neptune, hot Jupiters and even Jupiters so hot that they orbit so close to their star that their atmosphere is unlike anything in our solar system. Tomas Azevedo Silva of the University of Porto and his working group have described two exoplanets in Astronomy and Astrophysics.which stands out among even the most exotic celestial bodies: clouds of barium, the heaviest element discovered to date, drift into its gaseous envelope.
Element 56 in the periodic table is one of a number of components that clearly distinguish the atmospheres of two extrasolar planets from planet Earth. In addition to barium, WASP-76b also contains calcium, titanium oxide, and vanadium oxide, while WASP-121b contains vanadium, iron, chromium, calcium, sodium, magnesium, and nickel. Iron can even rain in certain areas of the WASP-76b that don’t heat up as much.
WASP-76b and WASP-121b are among the super-hot Jupiters, orbiting their star closely in just 1.8 and 1.27 days, respectively, which makes them extremely hot. Its surface temperature is more than 1000°C. However, astronomers were surprised by the possibility of detecting barium. “Given the high gravity of the planets, we expect heavy elements such as barium to rapidly fall into the lower atmosphere,” says co-author Olivier Demangeon.
“In a way, this was an ‘accidental’ discovery,” Azevedo Silva says. “We weren’t expecting or looking for barium and had to make sure that it actually came from the planet, because it had never been seen in an exoplanet before.” So the working group wonders. About the natural process that could lead to this heavy element occurring at such high altitudes on exoplanets, “At the moment, we’re not sure about the mechanisms,” Demanjohn says.
Barium and colleagues were discovered with the help of the ESPRESSO instrument on the ESO Very Large Telescope in Chile. At the same time, it was also possible to establish that the atmosphere around WASP-121b is slowly disappearing: it is evaporating under the influence of the nearby star. So Jupiter’s very hot time is limited.
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