The planet—called HD 209458b—orbits 100 times closer to its home star than our Jovian neighbor, traveling in an astonishingly fast 3.5-day orbit. For comparison, Mercury—our solar system fastest planet—has an 88-day orbit.
Since HD 209458b is so close to the sun, the stellar winds are ripping the planet's atmosphere apart. Scientists have used the Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to gather evidence that support the theory that its 2,000ºF atmosphere is being ejected from its body at 22,000 miles per hour.
20 comments:
Cool, wonder what it would be like if earth had a tail?
This is so cool
it would suck to live there lol
That's crazy!
Wow! I'll be like 50 is in a week.
oh snap! this is pretty awesome
Cool, I would love to see that planet IRL :)
I heard about that! Nice pic btw
22.000 miles per hour?!?! close the doors damn drafts xD
The universe is always showing us crazy new stuff. It seems unreal to think a planet could have a tail though!
awesome. wonder how long it'll be before the whole planet's atmosphere blows off
if earth had a tail it would be so much cooler, great stuff!
I really wish we could figure out fast interstellar travel, there's no telling how many amazing things like this we are missing in the universe.
I thought the weather here was bad.
That is a freaking hot planet!
wow thats awesome
sweeeeeeeeeet
good to know...
that orbit is ridiculous
Why oh why can't that be us? lol j/k, I would laugh my ass off if the scientists realized all these theories were wrong.
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