Imagining Extrasolar Planets

From the Spitzer Science Center. While astronomers have identified over 500 planets around other stars, they're all too small and distant to fill even a single pixel in our most powerful telescopes. That's why science must rely on art to help us imagine these strange new worlds. From Spitzer Space Telescope.

Even without pictures of these exoplanets, astronomers have learned many things that can be illustrated in artwork. For instance, measurements of the temperatures of many "Hot Jupiters," massive worlds orbiting very close to their stars, hint that their atmospheres may be as dark as soot, glowing only from their own heat.

While "Hot Jupiters" would be relatively dark in visible light, compared to their stars, their brightness is proportionally much greater in the infrared. Illustrating this dramatic contrast change helps explain why the infrared eye of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope plays a key role in studying exoplanets.

As our understanding evolves, so must the artwork. Astronomers found a blazing hot spot on the exoplanet Upsilon Andromedae b that at first, appeared to face towards its star. More data has revealed that the hottest area is actually strangely rotated almost 90 degrees away, near the day/night terminator.

WASP 12b is as hot as the filament in a light bulb, and would be blazing bright to our eyes. Most interestingly, if it proves to have a strongly elliptical orbit, as first thought, calculations show it would be shedding some of its outer atmosphere into a gassy disk around its star.

Computer simulations of HD 80606 b, constrained by global infrared measurements, are helping astronomers to better understand the details of how its atmosphere circulates. These computations can feed back into the artwork helping us produce more plausible illustrations.

The closest known exoplanet is 10 light years away in the Epsilon Eridani system. Excess infrared light found here by Spitzer has led astronomers to conclude it also has two asteroid belts, hinting at the possibility of other small, rocky worlds.

Perhaps the strangest known planetary system orbits the pulsar PSR B1257+12, the neutron star remnant of a supernova. Astronomers have detected three planets that either survived the explosion, or formed afterwards in this region filled with spinning magnetic fields and hostile radiation.

Until the day we can explore other star systems as thoroughly as our own, exoplanet art inspired by the real science will help fill in the gaps in our imagination.

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[endejan]

@SpaceRip You guys are awesome, probably the most high quality astronomy videos on Youtube (then again, I'm not sure). Just wondering when your next Cosmic Journeys video will come out.

[SpaceRip]

@endejan "probably" the best? definitely the best!

we are shooting for end of January for another episode. We're tackling the prospects that a "gravitationally-locked" planet like Gliese 581G can be life bearing. There are many interesting questions about atmospheric circulation, lack of day-night cycles, and more. So stay tuned! And thanks for being interested.

[sirLEVITSKY]

It's after watching videos like these that the debates between Theists, Deists and Atheists seem rediculous. We have been civilized for only thousands of years, and industrialized for hundreds and still have to use artists to sketch out planets light years away because they won't fit in a single pixle of our current instruments, and we have the audacity to claim that we know exactly how we came about. A universe infinite in size from a perspective of what is a dot in a tiny solar system.

[SARMA1956]

alright that was cool

[devilpizza123]

"it would be shitting some of its outer atmosphere into a gassy disc around its star?"

[junkers1337]

All the planets we have found so far are in a metaphorical stones throw from our system. Knowing this, I know there are other species out there, somewhere in this vast galaxy of ours.

[sbergman27]

@shmuli9 "I'm not sure in which direction Alpha Centauri A and B are oriented"

Nobody does. If we detect planets orbiting a star, using either the radial velocity or transit method, we can say something about orientation. Otherwise not. I believe that the transit method (Kepler) tells us more about orientation. Statistically, I think it works out to something like 1 in 100 systems having an orientation such that the transit method will work. But please don't quote me on that. I didn't verify it.

[shmuli9]

@sbergman27 I'm not sure in which direction Alpha Centauri A and B are oriented...

[sbergman27]

@shmuli9 The topic is somewhat non-intuitive. Being closer to us sometimes helps. But there's a lot more too it. Perhaps the most important factor is the orientation of the system. If the system does not happen to be edge-on WRT us, then we will never be able to detect with the transit method. And Kepler is only looking at distant stars, anyway. The radial velocity method can handle more variance in the angle. But if the plane of the system is perpendicular to us, we'd never detect planets.

[sbergman27]

@hotrodzwife Then you should reevaluate your irrational beliefs. (Hint: Your mother was clearly wrong.) In fact, the data confirming the existence of exoplanets is quite solid. Their gravitational effects on their parent stars is now easily detectable. And Kepler's use of the transit method of detection is nothing short of brilliant. If you are tired of being a stupid-ass, then stop being a stupid-ass. Simple as that. QED.

[maximkazhenkov11]

@hotrodzwife You do know that all this (just like EVERYTHING) was made possible by science? Especially space travel and space observation requires more science than anywhere else, so you might wanna give science a bit more credit.

[shmuli9]

I am really surprised planets haven't been detected around the closet sun to us.