Unexpected findings on planet 437 light years away
Scientists looking at the distant HAT-P-26b, called a “warm Neptune,” found that the planet orbiting a star roughly twice as old as the sun has a primitive atmosphere composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium.
Using observations from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, scientists made one of the most detailed studies to date of a planet that is Neptune-sized and close to its star. researchers determined that HAT-P-26b’s atmosphere is relatively clear of clouds and has a strong water signature, although the planet is not a water world. This led scientists to believe that compared to Neptune and Uranus, the planets in our solar system with about the same mass, HAT-P-26b likely formed either closer to its host star or later in the development of its planetary system, or both, a press release by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory notes.
“Astronomers have just begun to investigate the atmospheres of these distant Neptune-mass planets, and almost right away, we found an example that goes against the trend in our solar system. This kind of unexpected result is why I really love exploring the atmospheres of alien planets,” said Hannah Wakeford, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study published in the May 12, 2017, issue of Science.
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“To have so much information about a warm Neptune is still rare, so analyzing these data sets simultaneously is an achievement in and of itself,” said co-author Tiffany Kataria of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The researchers were able to use the water signature to estimate HAT-P-26b’s metallicity.
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