Iron and Titanium Found on 'Ultrahot Jupiter,' an Exoplanet First

Source: Space.com

Iron and Titanium Found on 'Ultrahot Jupiter,' an Exoplanet First

By Hanneke Weitering, Space.com Staff Writer | August 15, 2018 01:44pm ET

For the first time ever, astronomers have found iron and titanium in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. The exoplanet, named KELT-9b, is the hottest alien world ever discovered. The planet is so scorching, it's even hotter than most stars.

This sweltering exoplanet, located about 620 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, is what astronomers call an "ultrahot Jupiter." KELT-9b is a giant gas world like Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. But it's way bigger — it has three times the mass and twice the diameter of Jupiter — and it orbits extremely close to its hot parent star, KELT-9.

"Ultrahot Jupiter" is an unofficial term for a hot Jupiter exoplanet with temperatures exceeding 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (1,700 degrees Celsius). They "are so hot that they have some resemblance to being stars even though they're planets," Kevin Heng, an astrophysicist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who participated in the study, told Space.com. KELT-9b can reach temperatures of up to 7,800 degrees F (4,300 degrees C).

This record-breaking heat enabled astronomers to detect iron and titanium in KELT-9b's atmosphere. While researchers have long suspected that these elements are present on some exoplanets — iron is one of the most abundant elements in the universe — it's difficult to detect them in cooler environments because the atoms are mostly "trapped in other molecules," Heng said. However, KELT-9b is so hot that the clouds don't condense in its atmosphere, allowing individual atoms of iron and other metals to fly solo.

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Read more: https://www.space.com/41501-iron-and-titanium-exoplanet-atmosphere-discovery.html