A planet has discovered where it could rain ‘liquid gemstones’

This is the conclusion of a study by 12 astronomers published in natural astronomy†

WASP-121b are the scientists a’Hot Jupiter‘, a class of gas giants that resemble Jupiter but are very close to their star. The planet is so close to its star that it only takes 30 hours to orbit. Due to this short distance, temperatures on the day side rise to around 3000 degrees Celsius.

Due to the very short distance, WASP-121b also has synchronous rotation, meaning the same side always faces the star. This ensures that the side facing the sun is much warmer than the night side. Due to this huge temperature difference, many strange weather phenomena occur on the planet.

Metallic clouds

Because the day side faces the sun all the time, it gets so hot there that even metals like iron and chromium evaporate. Water vapor does not survive high temperatures and breaks down into hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

As soon as these atoms end up on the night side, they combine to form water again. However, it is still too hot there to form water clouds. But that does not mean that there are no clouds on the planet. From new study it now appears that metals in the night-side atmosphere could condense into metallic clouds.

The most notable discovery made by scientists is that the atmosphere is devoid of aluminum and titanium. According to the study authors, a possible explanation for this is that these substances condense on the night side in corundum, of which sapphires and rubies are made. This means it could be raining Liquid Gems on the planet.

Soon more information

The scientists used the information obtained from the Hubble-space telescope. Scientists observed the planet for two full orbits (60 hours). To measure the substances present in the atmosphere, they compared the evolution of the light spectrum emitted by the planet.

However, there is still much to learn about the planet, mean the scientists. For this reason, they would like to review the WASP-121b with the James Webb, the new space telescope after Hubble. According to lead author Thomas Mikal-Evans, the team wants to do this within the first year of James Webb’s commissioning.

Successor to Hubble

The James Webb Space Telescope was launched on Christmas Day last year and has since traveled around 1.6 million kilometres. Now that the telescope is up the final destination has arrived the six-month adjustment process has begun. Once this process is complete in early summer, the telescope will be ready for full operation.

Although scientists like Mikal-Evans can use the telescope to observe planets and stars, it has a different primary mission. The goal of James Webb is to find out what the universe looked like when he was very young. Moreover, there will be 13.7 billion years in the past look†