The planet HAT-P-32b is losing so much of its atmospheric helium that the trailing gas tails are among the largest structures yet known any planet outside our solar system. Three-dimensional (3D) simulations helped model the flow of the planet's atmosphere. The scientists hope to widen their planet-observing net and survey 20 additional star systems to find more planets losing their atmosphere and learn about their evolution.
A planet about 950 light years from Earth could be the Looney Tunes' Yosemite Sam equivalent of planets, blowing its atmospheric 'top' in spectacular fashion.
"We have monitored this planet and the host star with long time series spectroscopy, observations made of the star and planet over a couple of nights. And what we found is there's a gigantic helium gas tail that is associated with the planet.
The main motivation for the scientists' interest in studying hot Jupiters is their pursuit of the mystery of the Neptunian desert, the inexplicable relative scarcity on average of intermediate-mass planets, or sub-Jupiters, with short orbital periods."One of the potential explanations is that maybe the planets are losing their mass," Zhang offered.
"What we see in our data is that when the planet is transiting the star, we see there's deeper helium absorption lines. The helium absorption is stronger than what we expect from the stellar atmosphere. This excess helium absorption should be caused by the planet's atmosphere. When the planet is transiting, its atmosphere is so huge that it blocks part of the atmosphere that absorbs the helium line, and that causes this excess absorption.
The modelers utilized the Athena++ hydrodynamic software and a custom problem setup to do their calculation on Stampede2. With it they solve the equations of gas dynamics in a rotating frame of reference that matches the planet's orbital motion.
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