‘Hottest’ planet found has scorching heat of 3,200 Degree C
By ANIFriday, January 28, 2011
LONDON - Scientists claim to have found the hottest planet ever, where temperatures are a scorching 3200 Degrees Celsius.
Called WASP-33b or HD15082, the exoplanet is 380 light-years away in the constellation of Andromeda and was found in 2006, after observing regularly timed dimmings of its parent star, reports the Daily Mail.
Alexis Smith of Keele University in Staffordshire discovered its thermal emission using an infrared camera on the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands.
The exoplanet’s high temperatures are a result of its close orbit around its star, itself one of the hottest planet hosting stars at 7,160C. The atmosphere has ballooned to nearly four-and-a-half times the size of Jupiter.
The find confirms an earlier theory by Shu-lin Li from Peking University, who said that gravitational tidal forces make the interior so hot that it greatly expands the planet’s outer atmosphere.
The study is reported in New Scientist. (ANI)
