gas giant Archives

Newly formed giant planet - Grok via Astrobiology.com

Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release

Formation of Giant Planets

by Keith CowingJanuary 24, 2025January 24, 2025

Giant planets dominate the mass of many planetary systems, including the Solar System, and represent the best-characterized class of extrasolar planets.

This artist’s visualisation of WASP-127b, a giant gas planet located about 520 light-years from Earth -- ESO

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release

Extreme Supersonic Winds Measured On Exoplanet WASP-127b

by Keith CowingJanuary 21, 2025January 21, 2025

Astronomers have discovered extremely powerful winds pummeling the equator of WASP-127b, a giant exoplanet. Reaching speeds up to 33 000 km/h, the winds make up the fastest jetstream of its […]

An artist’s impression of the two new planets discovered. An inner super-Earth, here seen transiting in front of the orange host-star and an icy giant planet on the periphery of the system. Credit Thibaut Roger - Université de Genève

Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Icy Worlds, Press Release

Discovery of Two Planets Sheds New Light On The Formation Of Planetary Systems

by Keith CowingJanuary 20, 2025January 19, 2025

The discovery of two new planets beyond our solar system by a team of astronomers from The University of Warwick and the University of Geneva (UNIGE), is challenging scientific understanding […]

First image of the AO prototype ‘COME–ON’ system taken at 1.52 m telescope of the Observatoire de Haute Provence. γ2 And (a binary star with a 0.5′′ separation) was observed in K band [50]. -- astro-ph.IM

Astronomy & Telescopes, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

High-Contrast Imaging: Hide and Seek with Exoplanets

by Keith CowingJanuary 16, 2025January 16, 2025

So far, most of the about 5,700 exoplanets have been discovered mainly with radial velocity and transit methods. These techniques are sensitive to planets in close orbits, not being able […]

Factor by which we scale the secular matrix elements when moving or changing the mass of the outer companion. Overlain are KGPS systems from the He & Weiss (2023) analysis containing outer companions and at least three inner planets; cyan triangles denote OG systems while olive triangles denote SC systems. The white stars indicate the averages of these two groups. On average, the scaling factor is ∼ 102 times greater for OG systems than for SC systems in this sample. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Status Report

Secular Perturbations from Exterior Giants Strongly Influence Gap Complexity in Peas-in-a-Pod Exoplanetary Systems

by Keith CowingJanuary 13, 2025January 12, 2025

It has been demonstrated that systems of tightly packed inner planets with giant exterior companions tend to have less regular orbital spacings than those without such companions.

Snapshots show planetary seeds’ growth and migration from two rings of material. This simulation comes from our M6T2 scenario. The top-left panel shows the starting time of the simulation. The time of each snapshot is shown on the bottom-left of each panel. The color of each dot corresponds to the water mass fraction of each planetary seed. We plot planetesimal and pebble isolation masses with dotted and dashed lines, respectively. The planetesimal isolation mass is obtained by extrapolating the initial surface density of the inner planetesimal disk. The vertical blue dashed line shows the location of the water condensation line. The blue solid line is the boundary of the inward and outward migration where the migration torque is zero. -- astro-ph.EP

Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Formation of Super-Earths and Mini-Neptunes From Rings of Planetesimals

by Keith CowingJanuary 8, 2025

The solar system planetary architecture has been proposed to be consistent with the terrestrial and giant planets forming from material rings at ~1 au and ~5 au, respectively.

Jupiter and Saturn as seen in near-infrared by the JWST. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exploration Gear & Tech, Gas Giants, Icy Worlds, Jupiter, Saturn, Status Report

Simultaneous Evolutionary Fits for Jupiter and Saturn Incorporating Fuzzy Cores

by Keith CowingDecember 24, 2024December 24, 2024

With the recent realization that there likely are stably-stratified regions in the interiors of both Jupiter and Saturn, we construct new non-adiabatic, inhomogeneous evolutionary models with the same microphysics for […]

Comparison of nested POSEIDON Model B retrievals with and without H− and AlO, zooming on the 0.2 to 1.05 µm region. We display median retrieved spectra (solid lines) and 1σ confidence regions (shaded regions). Model B with both H− and AlO (blue) is the best fit model, but only due to imparting fine structure to fit the STIS slope. Future observations of the 0.2-0.8 µm region will provide more reliable inferences of metal species. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

JWST-TST DREAMS: A Precise Water Abundance for Hot Jupiter WASP-17b from the NIRISS SOSS Transmission Spectrum

by Keith CowingDecember 11, 2024December 11, 2024

Water has proven to be ubiquitously detected in near-infrared (NIR) transmission spectroscopy observations of hot Jupiter atmospheres, including WASP-17b.

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Exomoons Of Circumbinary Planets

by Keith CowingDecember 5, 2024December 5, 2024

Exomoon discovery is on the horizon. Although several exomoon candidates exist around single stars, there are currently no candidates around circumbinary planets (CBPs).

Top panel: Final flux-calibrated NIRSpec/Prism (blue) and MIRI/LRS (red) spectra of SIMP 0136+0933, compared to the spectrum presented in Vos et al. (2023) (black) and error (shaded in grey). For the NIRSpec and MIRI spectra, each spectrum is plotted individually. Notable absorption features are indicated by horizontal black lines and their labels. For each instrument, we plot each spectrum individually, so the observed spread is a result of both noise and intrinsic variability. Bottom panel: Minimum spectrum subtracted from the maximum spectrum. The maximum and minimum spectra were identified using the 4.5 − 5.1 µm light curve (Figure 4). -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

The JWST Weather Report From the Isolated Exoplanet Analog SIMP 0136+0933: Pressure-Dependent Variability Driven by Multiple Mechanisms

by Keith CowingNovember 26, 2024November 26, 2024

Isolated planetary-mass objects share their mass range with planets but do not orbit a star. They lack the necessary mass to support fusion in their cores and thermally radiate their […]