This is the length of an extrasolar planet – Money.pl

2014-04-30 19:33

[Photo: dracozlat - Fotolia.com]

researchers studied the planet for Beta Pictoris b called turned out that one day on the planet Earth in just eight hours, which means that its rotation around its axis is much faster than the Earth. The discovery has informed the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and the research work presents the study will be released on May 1 in Nature.

planet revolves around the star Beta Pictoris b, distant from us by 63 light years. Star visible to the naked eye in the constellation Painter. It is known as a flagship example of a disk of matter. The disk was already known before, and the presence of planets detected six years ago.

The distance of the planet from the star is eight times larger than the Earth-Sun distance. The property is very young, its age is estimated at 20 million years. The planet has a diameter of 16 times the mass of Earth, and as many as 3,000 times larger than our planet.

In their observations, the researchers used the VLT telescope belonging to the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and working at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Use of the instrument CRIRES done a very accurate spectroscopic observations and after removal of the effects coming from the star established that various parts of the planets move at different speeds in our direction and in the opposite direction.

The measurements indicate that the speed of rotation of the planet equatorial Beta Pictoris b is almost 100,000 km / h For comparison, the speed of Jupiter is 47,000 km / h, and the earth is less than 1700 km / h

– do not know why some planets rotate rapidly and others more slowly, but the first measurement of rotation exoplanets shows that the trend seen in the solar system, according to which the more massive planets rotate faster is true also for extrasolar planets. It must be a universal consequence of the way in which the planets formed – explains Remco de Kok, one of the members of the research team.

Scientists speculate that the planet cools over time and reduce its radius, which should cause even further increase in the rate of rotation, the principle analogous to spin faster skaters on the ice, when pressed her hands to the body.

study conducted by a team of Dutch astronomers at Leiden University and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research. Ignas Snellen led group. Astronomers predict that the technique will be able to be used in the future to a much larger group of extrasolar planets, and that you can make a global map of the surface or atmosphere of such planets.