Kepler-7b: Astronomers Create Cloud Map of Jupiter-Like Exoplanet

[n2doc]

This artist’s rendering shows the gas giant Kepler-7b, left, and Jupiter, right. The cloud map shows that clouds cover the western side of the gaseous planet, leaving the east cloud-free. Dr Demory and his colleagues speculate the clouds are made up of minerals containing silicates. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MIT.

Discovered in 2009, Kepler-7b is about half the mass of Jupiter, but is nearly 1.5 times its size.

It orbits its host star, Kepler-7, every 5 days at a distance of approximately 0.06 AU.

Kepler-7b is marked by high clouds in the west and clear skies in the east.

Previous studies have resulted in temperature maps of planets orbiting other stars, but this is the first look at cloud structures on a distant world.

“By observing this planet with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, we were able to produce a very low-resolution ‘map’ of this giant, gaseous planet,” explained Dr Brice-Olivier Demory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is a first author of the paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters (arXiv.org version, full paper in .pdf).

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http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/science-kepler7b-cloud-map-jupiter-exoplanet-01422.html