[PA-NJ Glassblowers] Hubble telescope spots azure blue planet where it RAINS GLASS

Tue Jun 24 22:38:46 EDT 2014

blue alien planet

This illustration above shows HD 189733b, a huge gas giant that orbits very
close to its host star HD 189733. 

The planet's atmosphere is scorching with a temperature of over 1000 degrees
Celsius, 

and it rains glass, sideways, in howling 7000 kilometer-per-hour (4,350 mph)
winds. Image released July 11, 2013.

No word yet on the cost to ship a Steinert blowpipe
300,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles from Earth.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/03/blue-alien-planet-molten-glass-atmo
sphere_n_3859350.html

There's a "blue marble" alien planet just 63 light-years from Earth, but the
world is anything but friendly to life. Researchers say the blue color in
the atmosphere likely comes from a rain of molten glass.

This
<http://www.space.com/22554-molten-glass-rain-on-hot-jupiter-video.html>
super-hot glass rain is just one consequence of the close proximity between
the gas giant
<http://www.space.com/21920-blue-alien-planet-hd-189733b-explained-infograph
ic.html> alien planet HD189733b and its sun. which causes daytime
temperatures to soar as high as 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (930 degrees
Celsius), scientists said.

A fresh set of observations of the planet in X-rays also suggest HD189733b
has an outer atmosphere that is far larger than expected. [
<http://www.space.com/21915-blue-alien-planet-color-images-hd-189733b.html>
See more images of the blue alien planet HD 189733b]

These surprise finds are all signals that so-called hot Jupiter alien
planets are worthy of study on their own, even though they are hostile
planets to life, researchers said.

Rewriting planetary formation

 <http://www.space.com/21473-alien-planets-migration-hot-jupiters.html> Hot
Jupiters are large, roughly Jupiter-sized planets that become very hot by
circling tight around their stars. These worlds have been described as
planetary daredevils because they orbit so close to their parent stars that
they risk being consumed. Often, one side of the planet is tidally locked to
the star, exposing that side to scorching hot temperatures, while leaving
the other side permanently turned away.

Hot Jupiters are easy to spot from a distance because as they pass in front
of a star, their disc blots out a large portion of the star's light;
HD189733b causes a three per cent drop in its star's light, for example. The
planets' gravitational pull often causes their parent stars to wobble, too.

While common in the universe, however, Hot Jupiters are totally different
than what denizens of Earth's solar system encounter. In our case, small,
rocky planets orbit close to the star and the gas giants are much farther
out.

The latest observations of HD189733b are
<http://www.space.com/20991-hot-jupiter-alien-planets-strange.html>
challenging some theories of planetary formation and are just one of the
reasons Hot Jupiters are earning more attention from astronomers these days.

"At first considered to be the 'chaff' researchers would have to wade
through to get to the fainter Earth-like worlds, hot Jupiters are now
attracting their own attention," NASA scientists wrote in a recent
Science at NASA post about these planets.

Boiling atmosphere

New attention came to HD189733b, which was discovered in 2005, after two
X-ray observatories watched the blue planet pass across the face of its
star. Both NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and ESA's XMM Newton saw a drop
in X-rays from the star that was three times more than that observed in
optical light.

This means the planetary atmosphere is much larger than previously thought.
It's also bleeding quickly. HD189733b's atmosphere is fleeing the planet at
a rate of 220 million pounds (100 million kilograms) to 1.3 billion pounds
(600 million kg) a second, a new study estimated.

"The extended atmosphere of this planet makes it a bigger target for
high-energy radiation from its star, so more evaporation occurs," Scott
Wolk, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said
in a statement.

HD189733b could also have bright planet-wide auroras due to the extensive
stellar radiation hitting it, but that's speculation at this point, the
study authors said.

The study has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal,
and is  <http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.2311> available now on the prepublishing
site Arxiv.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/11/world/space-blue-planet/

http://science.time.com/2013/07/12/found-a-blue-planet-that-rains-glass/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_189733_b 

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/exoplanet-hd-189733b.ht
ml#.U6o0YPmwJ4c

shows the image below of the blue planet, its atmosphere, and its sun.

This graphic depicts HD 189733b, the first exoplanet caught passing in front
of its parent star in X-rays.

You can find many more web pages if you do a Google search for HD189733b

Enjoy,

Tony Patti

 <http://www.glassblower.info> www.glassblower.info

 <mailto:gaffer at glassblower.info> gaffer at glassblower.info

 <http://www.glassblower.info/qr-code.html> QR Code for Tony Patti -
www.glassblower.info

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://glassblower.info/pipermail/pa-nj/attachments/20140624/cfe00664/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 16949 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://glassblower.info/pipermail/pa-nj/attachments/20140624/cfe00664/attachment.jpe 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 79726 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://glassblower.info/pipermail/pa-nj/attachments/20140624/cfe00664/attachment-0001.jpe 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 18749 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://glassblower.info/pipermail/pa-nj/attachments/20140624/cfe00664/attachment-0002.jpe 