An international team of researchers has discovered that variations in brightness of a starless “Super-Jupiter” must be the result of complex weather.
The team involving Trinity College Dublin (TCD) scientists says the discovery “provides crucial new insights into the 3-D complexity of gas giant atmospheres within and beyond our solar system”.
The “Super-Jupiter”, which is formally known as SIMP 0136, is a rapidly rotating, free-floating object roughly 13 times the mass of Jupiter.
It is located in the Milky Way just 20 light-years from Earth.
TCD school of physics associate professor Johanna Vos
Although it is not classified as a gas giant exoplanet — it doesn’t orbit a star — SIMP 0136 is an ideal target for exo-meteorology as it is the brightest object of its kind in the northern sky, the researchers explain.
“Because it is isolated, it can be observed with no fear of light contamination or variability caused by a host star. And its short rotation period of just 2.4 hours makes it possible to survey very efficiently,”they state.
Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to monitor a broad spectrum of infrared light emitted over two full rotation periods, the team says it was able to detect variations in cloud layers, temperature, and carbon chemistry that were previously hidden from view.
“We already knew that it varies in brightness, and we were confident that there are patchy cloud layers that rotate in and out of view and evolve over time,” Allison McCarthy, doctoral student at Boston University and lead author of the study published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, states.
Detailed characterisation of objects like these is essential preparation for direct imaging of exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, with NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is scheduled to begin operations in 2027, the scientists state.
“To see the full spectrum of this object change over the course of minutes was incredible,” TCD school of physics associate professor Johanna Vos, who was principal investigator, states.
“Until now, we only had a little slice of the near-infrared spectrum from Hubble, and a few brightness measurements from Spitzer.”
This research was conducted as part of Webb’s General Observer (GO) Programme. Other authors on the study include Dr Evert Nasedkin and Cian O’Toole from Trinity College Dublin.
