Hottest known planet discovery published in Nature

It’s hot. Seriously hot. Not creeping-into-the-90s-crank-up-the-AC hot: nearly-8,000-degrees-Fahrenheit hot.

KELT-9b is an exoplanet, but its dayside temp beats most stars in our galaxy — and comes close to our sun’s 10,000 degrees. A paper announcing 9b’s discovery, published this week in top science journal Nature, highlights some of the extreme characteristics of both the planet and its host star, KELT-9.

“The big deal about KELT-9b is that it is a planet in a close orbit around a really large and hot host star,” said BYU physics and astronomy research professor and study coauthor Michael Joner. “Everything we will measure about the atmosphere of KELT-9b in the future will represent extreme values and the limits of what is possible for an atmosphere.”

Joner and fellow BYU physics and astronomy professor Denise Stephens are project architects on the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) survey, spearheaded by researchers at The Ohio State University and Vanderbilt and comprised of more than 20 partner institutions. In the past four years, the group has announced the discovery of 19 exoplanets, and Joner anticipates a few more coming in the next year.

In February the group published a paper on KELT-16b, a so-called “hot Jupiter” recognized for its 4,000-degree heat, size (clocking in at 1.5 times the size of Jupiter) and wonky atmospherics. KELT-9b, said Joner, “is an even more extreme example” than 16b. There’s its hotter-than-any-other-known-planet heat, its size (close to three times the mass of Jupiter), and the massive amount of radiation it receives from a host star that is almost double the temperature of our sun and more than double its size.

“The long-term prospects for life — or real estate, for that matter — on KELT-9b are not looking good,” said Keivan Stassun, a Vanderbilt professor of physics and astronomy and study co-director.

Though the KELT team has been identifying planets whose origins, futures and atmospheres differ dramatically from the earth, Stephens said, understanding the extremes can ultimately help scientists better understand our own planet.

“We really want to find an earth, but the technology is not quite here,” she said. “But everything we learn from the KELT research ties to improving the technology to the point where someday you might be able to image an earth-like object.”

On BYU’s end, Stephens and Joner have worked with a handful of students to help confirm exoplanet candidates identified by the two tiny KELT survey telescopes. Recent grads Kyle Matt and Clement Gaillard are listed as coauthors on the Nature paper, which Matt calls “pretty exciting” — and a nice payoff for many a late night spent tracking the night sky from BYU’s Orson Pratt Observatory. Matt will begin a physics Ph.D. program in the fall, and Gaillard is teaching physics in China.

For Joner, who observes exoplanet candidates from BYU’s West Mountain Observatory, the findings deepen a passion he’s had since childhood. He grew up watching moon landings and dreaming about space exploration, and as a BYU physics student in the late ’70s and early ’80s, remembers talking to his peers about the possibility of other planets outside of our solar system. Since that time, he notes, there have been several thousand planetary discoveries, “expanding the knowledge of what we have around us, the universe we live in and what kinds of things are going on. This is a really golden age.”

Writer: Andrea Christensen

 

More Information on This Article

Article Source/Further Information

News and Events

Image for Dr. John Colton’s Sabbatical to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Dr. John Colton embarked on a six-month sabbatical at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado to explore the use of terahertz radiation in probing the chiral properties of hybrid perovskite materials, a research area previously unfamiliar to him.
Image for BYU Women Represent at CUWiP 2024
21 women student attend conference at Montana State University, where students engaged in keynote speeches, panels, and research presentations.
Image for Nathan Powers, Updated labs and AAPT lab committee work
Dr. Powers initiated the effort to update BYU’s physics undergraduate lab curriculum in 2015. The revamped curriculum, aimed at teaching students how to construct knowledge from experiments.
Image for Dr. Stephens’ Sabbatical to University of Arizona
Dr. Stephens participated in a research project at the University of Arizona focused on studying brown dwarfs using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Image for Adam Fennimore's Insights for Students
Alumni Adam Fennimore shares career insights for current students
Image for Society of Physics Students Awarded Outreach Grant
BYU's SPS is selected for Marsh Award for their outreach plan with Boys & Girls Club
Image for Rocket Noise and Bird Songs
Hart, Gee, and their research group study the impact of rocket noise on wildlife
Image for Dr. Ragozzine's Nice, France Obersvatoire Sabbatical
Darin Ragozzine collaborates with leading planetary scientists in France
Image for New Faculty Member, Dr. Greg Francis
Dr. Greg Francis joins faculty, specializing in Physics Education
Image for Steve Summers' Insights for Students
Alumni Steve Summers answers interview questions for current students