WASP-127b : Recent Study
Scientists recently detected ‘supersonic winds’ travelling at a speed of 33,000 km per hour on a giant gaseous planet named WASP-127b.
- WASP-127b is a large gaseous exoplanet, located in our Milky Way galaxy.
- It is approximately 520 light-years from the earth in a tight orbit around a star similar to our sun.
- It orbits its star roughly every four days at just about 5% of the distance between the earth and the sun, leaving it scorched by stellar radiation.
- Like our moon is to the earth, one side of WASP-127b perpetually faces its star—the day side. The other side always faces away—the night side.
- Its atmosphere is about 1,127 degrees Celsius, with its polar regions less hot than the rest.
- Its diameter is about 30% larger than Jupiter’s, but its mass is only about 16% that of Jupiter’s, making it one of the puffiest planets ever observed.
- Like Jupiter, WASP-127b is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, but its atmosphere also contains traces of more complex molecules such as carbon monoxide and water.
- It is a gas giant planet, which means that it has no rocky or solid surface beneath its atmospheric layers.
- The supersonic jet stream winds circling WASP-127b at its equator are the fastest of their kind on any known planet.
