Astronomers unveil the atmospheric composition of Topsitterby on a faraway planet

The atmosphere of a distant world is mapped in detail for the first time, revealing a strange, dizzy weather system, and the fastest winds ever blew inexplicably around the Earth's stratosphere.

Astronomers have been studying the WASP-121B, also known as Tylos, since 2015. A planet 900 light years away is a vast ball of gas twice the size of Jupiter, and the stars orbit very closely and complete their perfect orbit. Only 30 Earth Time. This close orbit heats the planet's atmosphere to a temperature of 2500°C, and is hot enough to boil iron.

now, Julia Seidel Chile and her colleagues' observatory in southern Europe use a very large telescope at the observatory to see in the burnt, hot atmosphere of Tyros, with at least three different layers of gas in different directions around the planet. I found out there. I've seen it before. “It's absolutely crazy, it's a science fiction-like pattern and behavior,” Seidel says.

The atmosphere of our solar system planets is driven by the internal temperature difference, whereas the winds in the upper layers are more affected by the temperature difference, and the strong wind flows are more affected by the temperature difference. shares a similar structure to Created by the heat of the sun, it warms the daylight side of the planet, while the other warms.

However, in the atmosphere of Tyros, it is driven by heat from the planetary stars, and it is the lower wind that moves away from the warm surface, but the jetstream is primarily in the middle layer of the atmosphere, surrounding the equator of Tyros. It looks like it's moving. In the direction of the planet's rotation. The upper layer also exhibits jetstream-like characteristics, but hydrogen gas floats outward from the planet. This is difficult to explain using current models, Seidel says. “What we're looking at now is actually the opposite of what comes out of theory.”

Furthermore, Tylos' jetstream is the most powerful ever, blasting at about 70,000 km/h on half the planet. This is almost twice as much as the previous record holder. It is unknown what exactly drives this velocity, but researchers believe it is caused by the planet's strong magnetic field or by ultraviolet rays from the stars. “This could change the flow pattern, but this is all very speculative,” Seidel says.