Living the fast life: Kepler-70b

The Kepler spacecraft (which was feared lost earlier this week) has discovered a veritable treasure trove of exoplanets over its seven year mission. Some of these planets may even be habitable.

Kepler-70b is decidedly not one of them.

Kepler-70b is the closer of two terrestrial planets to KOI-55, a subdwarf star which was once a red giant. Its radius is approximately three quarters of Earth’s radius. However, that may be where the similarities end.

The planet is remarkably close to its parent star, and thus has one of the shortest recorded orbital periods: 5.76 hours. Being so close, it is almost certainly too hot and irradiated to be habitable. How is a terrestrial planet so close to a star which was once a red giant? Astronomers postulate that Kepler-70b was once a gas giant, but was enveloped as its parent star grew, evaporating most of its gas and leaving only the rocky core behind. It is also speculated that Earth too will someday be swallowed by the Sun, but it isn’t thought that the planet will survive in any form.

Read what I read!

Universe Today

Exoplanet.eu

Artist’s impression of Kepler-70b. Source

Comet vs. Jupiter: the unfortunate fate of Shoemaker-Levy 9

On March 24, 1993, a comet was discovered by Eugene & Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy. It was the ninth comet that the the three had collaborated to discover, thus it was dubbed “Shoemaker-Levy 9”. However, as they soon discovered, this was no ordinary comet; it was a fragmented one that had been captured and was on a collision course with Jupiter. Scientists eagerly anticipated the impacts of the fragments, which were ascertained to take place between July 16 and July 24th of 1994.

The impacts were massive, and created fireballs which lit up infrared telescopes around the world. The marks left by the collisions were present for months and were the darkest spots to ever be observed on Jupiter.

For more on the impacts, including media coverage, images, and scientific conclusions, read what I read at Ron Baalke’s NASA site on the impact. Baalke’s site was one of the most influential in the history of the internet, and helped the world to recognize the potential that this new information-sharing medium held.

Pictured: the impact of SL9 on the bottom left of the planet. The bright object on the right is the satellite Io. Source