So, that's where my ex ended up. - new planet found by NASA

[ChairmanAgnostic]

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has observed a planet that heats up to red-hot temperatures in a matter of hours before quickly cooling back down.

The "hot-headed" planet is HD 80606b, a gas giant that orbits a star 190 light-years from Earth. It was already known to be quite unusual, with an orbit shuttling it nearly as far out as Earth is from our sun, and much closer in than our planet Mercury. Astronomers used Spitzer, an infrared observatory, to measure heat emanating from the planet as it whipped behind and close to its star. In just six hours, the planet's temperature rose from 800 to 1,500 Kelvin (980 to 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit).

"We watched the development of one of the fiercest storms in the galaxy," said astronomer Greg Laughlin of the Lick Observatory, University of California at Santa Cruz. "This is the first time that we've detected weather changes in real time on a planet outside our solar system." Laughlin is lead author of a new report about the discovery appearing in the Jan. 29 issue of Nature.



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yup, that's her. frigid most nights, absolutely irately red hot, during the days.

[Renew Deal]

1. 980 is frigid?

Are you posting this from hell? :evilgrin:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. depends on the scale.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. NASA has no business finding new planets until they return Pluto to us.

so sez I.

[Angleae]

4. You lost Pluto?

[Renew Deal]

5. Free Pluto!

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Oh, I love it !!!!

Stealing.........

[Confusious]

8. Well, really

Not all planets have the same gravity, so they can't all be equal now can they? :)

[Posteritatis]

7. Most Accurate Exoplanet Image Yet

From over on the Centauri Dreams blog, we've got a picture of said planet and a more detailed description of the weather:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=5767

I want to say that's cool, but it's probably not the most accurate choice of adjective.