Nyrath Posted January 28, 2009 Report Share Posted January 28, 2009 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/01/28/weather-sizzles-on-a-planet-that-kisses-its-star/ Gas giant HD 80606b orbits the star HD 80606, which is about 190 light years from Earth. Its orbital eccentricity is a jaw-dropping 0.927. This means that the planet starts at a chilly 125 million klicks from it's sun, and over 55 days it plummets to a mere 4 million klicks. The amount of heat it receives from its sun does not double, it does not triple, no, it rises 800 times!!! The planet's atmosphere becomes hot enough to melt copper. The player character's exploration starship establishes a stable orbit around HD 80606b, and starts analyzing the planet. They have more than a month of safety to do their planetary studies. They will be long gone before the temperature rises to dangerous levels. The game master says "Oops, the ship's engine just broke..." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 29, 2009 Report Share Posted January 29, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Sounds vaguely like Ploor of the old Lensman saga. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 29, 2009 Report Share Posted January 29, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Or a bit like the planet in Pitch Black. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Anomaly Posted January 30, 2009 Report Share Posted January 30, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Sounds vaguely like Ploor of the old Lensman saga. Just what I was thinking; this discovery now has me wondering where Eddore is... !! If Ploor is here, that means this is the Second Galaxy, and it's only a matter of time before Boskone moves in and occupies us! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted January 30, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet If Ploor is here' date=' that means [b']this[/b] is the Second Galaxy, and it's only a matter of time before Boskone moves in and occupies us! What do you mean? Boskone is already here. They are obviously the ones behind the Trilateral Commission/Bavarian Illumniati/Gnomes of Zurich/Whatever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Anomaly Posted January 30, 2009 Report Share Posted January 30, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet What do you mean? Boskone is already here. They are obviously the ones behind the Trilateral Commission/Bavarian Illumniati/Gnomes of Zurich/Whatever. So Andromeda is the First Galaxy... And... okay... I guess the Gnomes of Zurich are our Overlords of Delgon... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted February 4, 2009 Report Share Posted February 4, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Apparently there is a conference going on right now with some results from the COROT satellite. Among these is a transiting exoplanet in a 20-hour orbit -- insanely small -- around a K0V star, and a radius of about 1/8 Jupiter radii, which makes it between 1 and 2 times the size of Earth -- 1.7 earth radii is quoted. Wikipedia, following Sky & Telescope, has the most complete information I've been able to find; this being a conference, it looks like preprints are not yet available. I assume the orbit is circular; the reports available don't have all the technical data. Very small (for an exoplanet), but in that orbit it is not going to be a pleasant place to live. Only about 4 stellar radii from the star, its sun will occupy a large part of its sky on the daylight side. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted February 4, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 4, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Very small (for an exoplanet)' date=' but in that orbit it is not going to be a pleasant place to live. Only about 4 stellar radii from the star, its sun will occupy a large part of its sky on the daylight side.[/quote'] Heh. The planet is named "COROT-Exo-7b". So they've finally located the lava planet Excalbia. Instruct the COROT satellite to see if it can spot Abraham Lincoln. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sociotard Posted February 5, 2009 Report Share Posted February 5, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Wow. With an orbit like that I would have expected the atmosphere to have boiled off already. I guess having 4 times the mass of Jupiter would help, but sheesh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Anomaly Posted February 5, 2009 Report Share Posted February 5, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Among these is a transiting exoplanet in a 20-hour orbit -- insanely small -- around a K0V star' date=' and a radius of about 1/8 Jupiter radii, which makes it between 1 and 2 times the size of Earth -- 1.7 earth radii is quoted.[/quote'] It has a 20 hour orbit around its primary?!?!? I'm sorry, but "insane" just doesn't do justice to that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted February 5, 2009 Report Share Posted February 5, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Someone missed a decimal in their calculations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 23, 2009 Report Share Posted September 23, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Followup, inspired by today's APOD image. Houston, we have a rock. The preprint about the CoRoT-7 system is out (has been for almost a month); the press release from ESO has been out for a week. You can get the PDF of the preprint to appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics from that linked page. Two planets in the system, designated b and c. Their masses are 4.8 +/- 0.8 and 8.4 +/- 0.9 Earth masses respectively. Orbital periods are 0.85 and 3.7 days, respectively, with assumed circular orbits of sizes 0.017 and 0.046 AU. They seem to have detected the inner planet, (, transiting the star. That means, with the spectroscopic orbit solution, we know the size of the planet and therefore its density. b's average density is 5.6 +/- 1.3 g cm^-3. For comparison, Earth's is 5.5 in those units. We got a rock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted September 23, 2009 Report Share Posted September 23, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucius Posted September 23, 2009 Report Share Posted September 23, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet That ROCKS! Lucius Alexander Tha palindromedary wonders when we're going to roll Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drhoz Posted October 11, 2009 Report Share Posted October 11, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Quick mini-essay on COROT-7b I just threw together With the list of known extrasolar planets getting longer and longer every week, and whole new types of planets like the Hot Jupiters, it's not surprising that we eventually discover an example of something even more extreme - a Cthonian Planet named COROT-7b. Cthonian worlds are thought to be what you get when a small gas giant orbits so close to it's parent star that all the 'normal' atmosphere of hydrogen, helium, and lighter gases boils off under the blaze of coronal mass ejections, and the like. In the case of COROT-7b, what we have left is a ball of silicate rock under twice as big as Earth, orbiting so close to it's parent star that the year is 20 hours long. That's close enough for one side of the planet to fry at 2700 Kelvin ( well over 4000 Fahrenheit ). But because it's so close to it's star - a mere 1.26 million miles - tidal forces have almost certainly locked it - so the dark side would be a mere 288 Kelvin (59 degrees Fahrenheit). Thermochemical equilibrium calculations show that starting with those conditions, and that sort of rock, the atmosphere would be a sodium, potassium, and silicon monoxide vapour - and surprising amounts of oxygen, cracked from the rocks as they boil. Other elements such as magnesium, aluminium, calcium and iron would appear in lesser amounts. But despite the weirdness you'd still get the same kind of weather you get on earth - different layers of atmosphere saturated with different gases, until they start to condense out and fall as rain and hail. But on COROT-7b the oceans are molten lava and the hail is in the form of red-hot pebbles. And they'd fractionate out too, so some storms would rain enstatite and rubies, and others would dump spinel and wollastonite And on top of all that, as the red-hot winds howl around the planet from Hot Side to Dark, the entire daylight atmosphere lights like a sodium lamp, from the sodium metal vapour that makes up most of it reacting to the solar wind from COROT-7. Not a hospitable place - but an awesome sci-fi setting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted October 12, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 12, 2009 Re: The Icarus Planet Excellent suggestion Drhoz! That would be an awesome setting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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