know more and more and meet some of them habitable, but now a Dutch team has for the first time to measure the length of a day Beta Pictoris exoplanet in eight hours, using the Very Large Telescope located in Chile.
Exoplanets are those planets outside our solar system identified an area where there have been increasing in recent years discoveries : NASA in February estimated that there are 1,700 identified and more recently the discovery of the first exoplanet about the size of Earth where liquid water exist was confirmed, which would potentially habitable
A team. Dutch astronomers at Leiden University and the Institute for Space Research of the Netherlands (SRON) is achieved using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal Chile, measure the length of a day on one of those exoplanets :. a day in the Beta Pictoris b runs in just eight hours
Scientists estimated that the largest Ecuador on this planet 16 times and with a mass 3,000 times that of Earth rotates at a speed of 100.000 mph, extremely fast compared to 17,000 kilometers per hour traveling to our planet and only comparable in the Solar System 47,000 kilometers per hour on Jupiter.
The relationship between mass and confirm the observed rotation to do exoplanets extended to conditions in the solar system, which could be related to the formation of planets.
“It is not known why some planets move faster and others more slowly, “said Remco de Kok, co-author of study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday,” but this first step of the rotation of an exoplanet shows that the trend seen in the solar system, where the most massive planets orbit faster can be applied to exoplanets. “
” There must be a universal consequence arising from the way the planets are created, “he added.
Beta Pictoris is a very young planet , only 20 million years, compared to 4,500 million earth, and is expected to grow as more cool and shrink, which would make rotase even faster.
Researchers were able to determine the rotation of Beta Pictoris b, a star formed by giant gas discovered in 2008 orbiting the Pictoris star located 63 light years of Earth, using a technique called spectroscopy.
The results of this research could lead to a detailed map of exoplanets, mass and specific conditions in the future.
“Now we know from this study that Beta Pictoris b is certainly not a planet a brown dwarf (often known as failed stars), so now this assumption is not used, “said for his part AFP Dimitri Mawet, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) who also works with the VLT.
“We have very important steps and serve to refine the model of the atmosphere of this planet (…) that will be the basis for others and understand how they are formed.”
Mawet said it is the first time that the rotational speed is shown. “It will allow us to have statistics and learn about the formation of the planets and their rotation speed, and also on the conditions of its surface. This opens the door to many exciting discoveries in the future.”
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