London – Far more than 1000 planets beyond our solar system are already known. Little however is known about their nature. Two research teams lay now in the journal “Nature” analysis of the atmosphere of two exoplanets before that are larger than Earth and have about the same size as Neptune.
This size is probably the most common in the Milky Way. In our solar system such planets, however, are comparatively rare, and draw conclusions about their composition and atmosphere are elsewhere not so easy.
Two teams of astronomers have now GJ 1214b 436b taken around 40 light years away pretty near exoplanets (slightly smaller than Neptune) and GJ (slightly larger than Neptune) under the microscope, more precisely, they have studied how the spectrum of light changed when the two exoplanets pass in front of its star.
clouds or dusty haze
As the team writes to Heather Knudson from Caltech in Pasadena in the journal “Nature”, there is GJ 436b, which is 230 degrees Celsius clearly warmer than the earth, probably a Diche layer of Wolkenm the little but to our have to do: that this super-Earth are thought to consist of potassium chloride or zinc sulfide. A second possibility would be an atmosphere having little hydrogen.
The atmosphere of GJ 1214b was by Laura Kreidberg (University of Chicago) and colleagues also examined in “Nature”. Your Result: This exoplanet must, according to the spectral analyzes also have a dense cloud cover. The researchers were able to rule in any case that the planet has an atmosphere without clouds, occur in the water molecules. (Tash, derStandard.at, 1.1.2014)
“Nature” Abstracts
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