On a windy day on the planet HD 189733b it is better not to go out.
On a planet about 63 light-years away from us in the Chanterelle constellation, winds blow at a speed of 5,400 miles per hour, which is 20 times faster than the strongest hurricanes on Earth.
Planet HD 189733b - a solid extreme. It is about 10% more than Jupiter, but is located 180 times closer than Jupiter to the Sun, much closer, even than Mercury is the innermost planet of the Solar System.
Scientists estimate that the temperature on this planet reaches almost 3700 degrees Fahrenheit.
HD 189733b rotates around the parent star every 2, 2 days, rotating at a speed of 341,000 miles per hour.
Scientists from the University of Warwick were able to measure the speed on the day and night sides of the planet's surface. They found that on the night side winds blow at a speed of 5,400 miles per hour. "Since the atmosphere of HD 189733b is constantly moving, its movement speed can be measured thanks to the Doppler effect," said lead researcher Tom Lowden in a statement. "This is the first weather map outside our solar system."
Astronomers used a high-precision echelle spectrograph (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher - abbr. HARPS), installed in La Silla, Chile, to view the transit of the planet in front of the parent star.
“The planet is moving in front of a star, blocking a certain amount of light with its atmosphere. For the first time, we used this method to measure the speed of the wind on opposite sides of the planet,” said Louden.
A study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
