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HD 80606 b (also Struve 1341 B b or HIP 45982 b) is an
eccentric Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to: * Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal" Mathematics, science and technology Mathematics * Off-center, in geometry * Eccentricity (graph theory) of a v ...
and
hot Jupiter Hot Jupiters (sometimes called hot Saturns) are a class of gas giant exoplanets that are inferred to be physically similar to Jupiter but that have very short orbital periods (). The close proximity to their stars and high surface-atmosphere t ...
190
light-year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distance, astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 Orders of magnitude (numbers)#1012, trillion kilometers (), or 5.88  ...
s from the Sun in the
constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the earliest constellation ...
of
Ursa Major Ursa Major (; also known as the Great Bear) is a constellation in the northern sky, whose associated mythology likely dates back into prehistory. Its Latin name means "greater (or larger) bear," referring to and contrasting it with nearby Ursa ...
. HD 80606 b was discovered orbiting the star HD 80606 in April 2001 by a team led by
Michel Mayor Michel Gustave Édouard Mayor (; born 12 January 1942) is a Swiss astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva's Department of Astronomy. He formally retired in 2007, but remains active as a researcher at the Observatory ...
and Didier Queloz. With a mass 4 times that of
Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousand ...
, it is a
gas giant A gas giant is a giant planet composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. Gas giants are also called failed stars because they contain the same basic elements as a star. Jupiter and Saturn are the gas giants of the Solar System. The term "gas giant" ...
. Because the planet transits the host star its radius can be determined using the
transit method Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty o ...
and was found to be slightly smaller than Jupiter's. Its density is slightly less than Earth's. It has an extremely eccentric orbit like a comet, with its orbit taking it very close to its star and then back out very far away from it every 111 days.


Discovery

The variable radial velocity of HD 80606 was first noticed in 1999 from observations with the 10-m Keck 1 telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii by the G-Dwarf Planet Search, a survey of nearly 1000 nearby G dwarfs to identify extrasolar planet candidates. The star was then followed up by the Geneva Extrasolar Planet Search team using the ELODIE spectrograph mounted on the 1.93-m telescope at the Haute-Provence Observatory. The discovery of HD 80606 b was announced on 4 April 2001.


Physical properties

HD 80606 b has the most eccentric orbit of any known planet after
HD 20782 b HD 20782 b is an extrasolar planet located approximately 117 light-years away in the constellation of Fornax, orbiting the star HD 20782. This planet orbits in the most eccentric orbit known (as of November 2012), with a semi-major axis In ...
. Its eccentricity is 0.9336, comparable to
Halley's Comet Halley's Comet or Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley, is a short-period comet visible from Earth every 75–79 years. Halley is the only known short-period comet that is regularly visible to the naked eye from Earth, and thus the on ...
. The eccentricity may be a result of the
Kozai mechanism In celestial mechanics, the Kozai mechanism is a dynamical phenomenon affecting the orbit of a binary system perturbed by a distant third body under certain conditions. It is also known as the von Zeipel-Kozai-Lidov, Lidov–Kozai mechanism, Kozai ...
, which would occur if the planet's orbit is significantly inclined to that of the binary stars. This interpretation is supported by measurements of the
Rossiter–McLaughlin effect The Rossiter–McLaughlin effect is a spectroscopic phenomenon observed when an object moves across the face of a star. Description The Rossiter–McLaughlin effect is a spectroscopic phenomenon observed when either an eclipsing binary's secon ...
, which indicate that the planet's orbit may be significantly inclined (by 42°.) to the rotational axis of the star, a configuration which would be expected if the Kozai mechanism were responsible for the orbit. As a result of this high eccentricity, the planet's distance from its star varies from 0.03 to 0.88 AU. At
apastron An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any el ...
it would receive an
insolation Solar irradiance is the power per unit area ( surface power density) received from the Sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation in the wavelength range of the measuring instrument. Solar irradiance is measured in watts per square metre ...
similar to that of Earth, while at
periastron An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any el ...
the insolation would be around 800 times greater, far more than that experienced by Mercury in the Solar System. In 2009, the eclipse of HD 80606 b by its parent star was detected, allowing measurements of the planet's temperature to be made as the planet passed through periastron. These measurements indicated that the temperature rose from around 800 K (500 °C / 1000 °F) to 1500 K (1200 °C / 2200 °F) in just 6 hours. An observer above the cloud tops of the gas giant would see the parent star swell to 30 times the
apparent size The angular diameter, angular size, apparent diameter, or apparent size is an angular distance describing how large a sphere or circle appears from a given point of view. In the vision sciences, it is called the visual angle, and in optics, it is ...
of the Sun in our own sky. The transit was detected using a
Celestron Celestron is an American company based in Torrance, California, United States, that manufactures telescopes and distributes telescopes, binoculars, spotting scopes, microscopes, and accessories manufactured by its parent company, the Synta Technol ...
35-cm
Schmidt–Cassegrain telescope The Schmidt–Cassegrain is a catadioptric telescope that combines a Cassegrain reflector's optical path with a Schmidt corrector plate to make a compact astronomical instrument that uses simple spherical surfaces. Invention and design The A ...
at the UCL Observatory. Prior to the large data release of the
Kepler Mission The Kepler space telescope is a disused space telescope launched by NASA in 2009 to discover Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbi ...
in February 2011, HD 80606 b has the longest orbital period of any known transiting planet. It takes 12.1 hours to transit its star. The transit of 14 January 2010 was partially observed by MOST; but there were equipment failures over part of this time, and the 8 January secondary transit was entirely lost. The midpoint of the next transit was 1 February 2013 11:37 UT.HD 80606 Transit Times – Variable Star and Exoplanets
/ref>


Weather

The planet has wild variations in its weather as it orbits its parent star. Computer models predict the planet heats up in just a matter of hours, triggering "
shock wave In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a me ...
storms" that ripple out from the point facing its star, with winds that move at around .


Notes


References


External links


Heating Up on a Distant Planet (ScienceFriday)
{{Sky, 09, 22, 37.5679, +, 50, 36, 13.397, 190 Ursa Major (constellation) Giant planets Exoplanets discovered in 2001 Exoplanets detected by radial velocity Transiting exoplanets