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By Tariq Malik
Staff Writer
posted: 02:16 pm ET
02 February 2004


Astronomers have detected the first presence of oxygen and carbon in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet, a world already known to be venting massive amounts of gas into space.

The find is evidence of an atmospheric "blow off" in action, where energetic hydrogen gas drags heavier elements along for a supersonic ride into space.


"If you imagine a wind so efficient that it takes everything with it, sand particles for instance, you get the idea," said the study's leader Alfred Vidal-Madjar, of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris. The planet "is really losing a lot of material even more efficiently than we thought before."

Despite the oxygen, the faraway planet is not one that would support life.

Dismembering

The Jupiter-like planet is officially called HD 209458b, though Vidal-Madjar's team has nicknamed it Osiris after an Egyptian god who was dismembered by his brother Seth. It orbits a Sun-like star 150 light-years from Earth.

Astronomers already knew the planet was rapidly losing its atmosphere after a previous study led by Vidal-Madjar found it spewing out enough hydrogen gas to create an envelope that extended and trailed the extrasolar world.

The planet was thought to be losing at least 10,000 tons of material each second, but researchers weren't sure the process was powerful enough to dredge up heavier elements.

Carbon and oxygen atoms are 10 times heavier than those of hydrogen, and therefore would normally lie low in a planet's atmosphere, explained Gilda Ballester, a University of Arizona astronomer who took part in the study. "So a force stronger than gravity is driving them up along with the hydrogen gas into the extended envelope around this planet," she said.

The cause

The venting process has been attributed to a pair of reasons, namely the intense gravitational forces between the planet and its parent star, as well as the super-hot temperature of the planet's atmosphere. HD 209458b circles its stellar parent every 3.5 days from a distance of just 4.4 million miles (7 million kilometers), which is closer than Mercury's orbit around the Sun.

The tight orbit causes intense gravitational tiding that stretches the planet's atmosphere into an oval shape, not unlike a rugby ball, which can allow gas to escape. The upper atmosphere itself is baked up to 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit (10,000 degrees Celsius), which forces hydrogen atoms to expand outward at supersonic speeds.

The hydrogen wind erupts away from the planet like a geyser and is powerful enough to sweep up carbon and oxygen with it.

The planet may eventually shed its entire atmosphere, leaving behind only a solid core remnant of its once massive self. The unique nature of this process has led Vidal-Madjar's team to propose the existence of a new class of extrasolar planets, one which may be populated by the remains of worlds that have shed their atmospheric skins and orbit even closer to their suns than HD 209458b.
The process is similar to one that may have eventually produced the atmospheres around more local planets, such as Venus and Earth, astronomers said.

"The composition of Earth's atmosphere today is so peculiar, that there must exist an efficient process that blew out much of the original material," Vidal-Madjar told SPACE.com. "Now we are directly observing it in Osiris."

More to learn

The next step, Vidal-Madjar says, is to search for even heavier elements, such as iron, in the envelope around HD 209458b, which would go further in confirming the blow out process.

Vidal-Madjar's team used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe HD 209458b between October and November in 2003. Since the planet partially eclipses its parent star - HD 209458 - during each orbit, researchers can to probe its atmospheric makeup during the transit. The new research will appear in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

HD 209458b orbits a star in the constellation Pegasus, which can be seen with binoculars from the ground. The planet was first detected in 1999 using the wobble method of planet hunting. A separate team of astronomers previously detected sodium in the planet's atmosphere as well.

pictures can be found on: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/extrasolar_blowout_040202.html

Gee look at the pretty pictures. What a waste of tax payer money.

And I heard they found Methane and Hydrogen Sulfide in Uranus to.

Have another bowl of Chili.

DB

This does not even scratch the surface of what NASA has done for mankind.

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In the mid-1960s the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed digital image processing to allow computer enhancement of Moon pictures. This technology is now used by doctors and hospitals to record images of organs in the human body. Two of the most widely used techniques are computer-aided tomography (CATScan) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

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The B-52B, also known as the Stratofortress, is an air launch carrier aircraft, as well as a research aircraft platform that has been used on research projects. The B-52B was built in the 1950s and is NASA's oldest aircraft.

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SR-71, also known as the "Blackbird," is the research aircraft used by NASA as a test bed for high-speed, high-altitude aeronautical research. It was secretly designed in the 1950s at Lockheed's Advanced Development Company, commonly known as "Skunk Works."

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Did you know that data from satellite instruments are used by fishermen to find areas where fish are most likely to be found? Fish find food in zones where cold and warm water mix.

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The Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) is NASA's center for aeronautical flight research and atmospheric flight operations. DFRC is chartered to research, develop, verify, and transfer advanced aeronautics, space and related technologies. It also serves as a backup landing site for the Space Shuttle and a facility to test and validate design concepts and systems used in development and operation of the Orbiters.

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Landsat was the series of revolutionary satellites that were first launched in 1972 for the purpose of systematically photographing the surface of the Earth from space.

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The X-15 aircraft made a total of 199 flights over a period of nearly 10 years from 1959 to 1968. It set unofficial world speed and altitude records of 4,520 mph (Mach 6.7) and 354,200 feet. Information gained from the highly successful program contributed to the development of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft and the Space Shuttle program.

I'm all for research. I worked at Edwards AFB during the early 80's, and was there while the shuttle was being tested and witnessed the first landing when it came back from space. I now work at Langley AFB and have quite a few friends that work for NASA Langley. I agree NASA does good work in aeronautics research and some other areas. I just don't think the missions that they've undertaken have resulted in much real useful information.

Along the way they've developed some great technology. I don't think we'll learn anything from mars, the moon, or any other heavenly body that will impact my life. I just think the research dollars could be better spent.

Just think where we'd be if the government pumped that kind of research money into alternative fuel vehicles or improved communications systems. We'd still get the spin-off technology but in the end we'd have something useful and not just pictures of rocks.

I see your point. Personally, if I could choose between two possible news items, I'd rather hear that everyone on this planet is warm and fed, rather than that there is oxygen on another planet.

But pure research is a part of us, the exercise of that curiosity with which we're gifted. (Unfortunately, it's also obvious that politics determine where the money goes.)