Spitzer Space Telescope observations, reported by Laughlin et al., provide a first glimpse of time-varying weather on the extrasolar planet HD 80606b. The video represents the calculated optical emission from the planet: the blue crescent is scattered starlight, and the colour arises from a combination of Raleigh scattering and absorption by alkali metal ions. The equatorial jet and high-latitude vortices on the night side are glowing with their own intrinsic thermal emission.
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