July 28 (UPI) — NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a remarkable phenomenon – a young planet orbiting its parent star so closely that its atmosphere is being expelled into space.
This planet resides in the stellar system AU Microscopii, located 32 light-years away from Earth. By measuring the fluctuations in brightness as the planet transits in front of its star, the Hubble Space Telescope was able to detect the planet’s escaping atmosphere.
“A young planet orbiting a tempestuous red dwarf star undergoes unpredictable changes with each revolution. The planet is positioned remarkably close to its parent star, enduring a constant bombardment of energy that causes its hydrogen atmosphere to evaporate, resulting in the atmospheric bleed happening right before our eyes,” explained NASA on Thursday.
The parent star, AU Microscopii, is merely 100 million years old, making it considerably younger than our own 4.6-billion-year-old sun. The observed planet losing its atmosphere is a mere 6 million miles away from AU Microscopii – ten times closer than Mercury is to the Sun – and completes one orbit around its star every 8.46 days.
Similar to other red dwarf stars, AU Microscopii emits intense radiation and solar flares, factors that could hinder the potential habitability of planets orbiting such stars.
Interestingly, when the planet was previously observed passing in front of AU Microscopii, no signs of atmospheric loss were detected. However, subsequent observations conducted a year and a half later revealed the planet’s sudden atmospheric bleed.
“We have never witnessed such a rapid transition from undetectable atmospheric escape to highly detectable escape when a planet transits its star. This peculiar observation serves as an extreme stress-test scenario for planetary evolution models and physics. It offers a unique opportunity to study the intricate dynamics between a star and its planet,” commented Keighley Rockcliffe of Dartmouth College.
First detected by NASA’s Spitzer space telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite in 2020 using the transit method, which observes the decrease in brightness caused by a planet passing in front of its host star, this planet has sparked theories among researchers. They believe that the significant variations in atmospheric loss could be attributed to solar flares, which could cause hydrogen to become transparent and unobservable due to photoionization.
Alternatively, the fluctuations in atmospheric loss could result from the fluctuations in solar winds emanating from the red dwarf star.
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