The exoplanet is Beta Pictoris b, moving at 100,000 km / h – RTVE

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Some observations made with the VLT (Very Large Telescope) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have determined, for the first time rotational speed of an exoplanet . This is Beta Pictoris b, located about 63 light years from Earth and your day lasts only eight hours .

This rate is higher than that of any planet in the system Solar, whose Ecuador is moving nearly 100,000 mph. Thus, this new result extends exoplanets existing relationship between mass and rotation in the Solar System . In the future, similar techniques using the E-ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope) will allow astronomers to make detailed maps of exoplanets.

The research, published in the journal Nature, is presented in the article Fast spin of a young extrasolar planet (Fast Rotating a young extrasolar planet) as it has revealed the ESO in a notes .

Beta Pictoris b

The Beta Pictoris b exoplanet orbiting the star Beta Pictoris-Naked Eye -., is located in the southern constellation Pictor (the easel painter)

This planet was discovered nearly six years ago and was one of the first exoplanet direct imaging that was obtained. It orbits its parent star at a distance of only eight times the Earth-Sun distance. It is also the closest he exoplanet to its star caught in direct images .

Beta Pictoris b is a very young planet , only about 20 million years (compared to 4,500 million earth). With the passage of time, is expected to cool and shrink exoplanet, which will rotate even faster.

In addition, there are other processes that may affect the switching speed of planet. For example, the spin of the Earth is slowing down over time due to tidal interactions with our honeymoon.

Fast rotation

Using the instrument CRIRES, installed on the VLT, a team of Dutch astronomers at Leiden University and the Institute for Space Research of the Netherlands (SRON) found that equatorial rotation speed of the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b is almost 100,000 kilometers per hour .

In comparison, the Jupiter Ecuador has a speed of about 47,000 miles per hour, while the Earth travels at only 1,700 km per hour. Beta Pictoris b is more than 16 times larger and 3,000 times more massive than Earth , but one day the planet only lasts 8 hours.

“It is not known why some planets revolve faster and some slower, “said Remco de Kok, co-author” but this first step of the rotation of an exoplanet shows that the trend seen in the Solar System , in which the most massive planets rotate faster may be applied to exoplanets . It must be a universal consequence arising from the way the planets are created. “

used by astronomers

The astronomers made use of a technique very accurate call high dispersion spectroscopy to split the light into the colors that form, ie, different wavelengths in the spectrum.

The principle of the Doppler effect (or Doppler shift) allowed them to use the change in wavelength to detect different parts of the planet were moving at different speeds and in opposite directions relative to the observer.

Removing carefully the effects of the host star, much brighter, were able to extract the signal of the planet’s rotation .

“We have measured the wavelengths of the radiation emitted by the planet with an accuracy one part in a hundred thousand , which makes the measurements sensitive to the Doppler effect that can reveal the speed of the emitting objects “confirmed lead author Ignas Snellen.

” Using this technique we find that different parts of the planet’s surface toward or away from us at different speeds, which can only mean that the planet rotates around its axis. “

This technique is closely related to Doppler technique to make images, which has been used for decades to map the surfaces of stars and, recently, the enana Luhman 16B brown . The rapid turnover of Beta Pictoris b means that, in future, be possible to a global map of the planet, showing cloud patterns and possible severe storms .

“This technique can used in a much larger sample of exoplanets with excellent resolution and sensitivity of the E-ELT and a spectrograph image high dispersion. With the future instrument METIS (Mid-infrared E-ELT Imager and Spectrograph) we will be able to make global maps exoplanets and characterize much smaller planets Beta Pictoris b with this technique, “says lead researcher and co-author of METIS new article, Bernhard Brandl.