Supersonic winds discovered on exoplanets
Astronomers have discovered that an exoplanet experiences supersonic winds, reaching speeds of up to 33,000 km/h. This makes it the fastest winds ever measured on any planet. The Jetstream are on the equator of WASP-127b, a giant exoplanet and the discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile.
While hurricanes and cyclones can wreak havoc on Earth, winds detected on other planets can be on a whole other scale, especially for those outside the Solar System. Ever since the gas giant was discovered in 2016, astronomers have investigated its weather. The planet is 500 light years from earth and slightly larger than Jupiter, though has only a fraction of its mass.
But the international team of astronomers have made the unique discovery, that its equator is hit by supersonic winds.
“Part of the atmosphere of this planet is moving towards us at a high velocity while another part is moving away from us at the same speed,” says Lisa Nortmann, a scientist at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and the study’s lead author. “This signal shows us that there is a very fast, supersonic, jet wind around the planet’s equator.”
Measuring 9km per second, close to a supersonic 33,000 km/h, the jet winds move at almost six times the planet’s rotation speed.
“This is something we haven’t seen before,” says Nortmann. For comparison, the fastest wind ever measured on a planet in the Solar System was on Neptune, being clocked at just 0.5km per second or 1,800 km/h.
The research was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The team measured how light from its host star travels across its upper atmosphere, allowing them to trace its composition. This allowed them to confirm water vapour and carbon monoxide molecules in its atmosphere. But when they measured the speed of the material in its atmosphere, they discovered, to their shock, that it has been moving at a supersonic speed.
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