human development

Exoplanet Beta Pictoris b was discovered through the use of direct imaging by a team led by Ignas Snellen of Leiden University in the Netherlands. It is a 20-million-year-old planet in the Beta Pictoris star system just 65 light-years from Earth. Beta Pictoris b has some unique qualities including an orbit that is significantly distant from its star estimated to be approximately double the distance from the to Jupiter.

 “Beta Pictoris b rotates at 25 kilometers per second at its equator.” This is actually faster than any of the planets in our solar system. It’s 50 times faster than Earth despite the fact that Beta Pictoris b is 3,000 times more massive than Earth as well as 16 times wider. A day there lasts for just eight hours.

Beta Pictoris b’s rotation rate by studying how infrared light passes through carbon monoxide in the exoplanet’s atmosphere. As it rotates half of Beta Pictoris b spins towards Earth and the other away from Earth. The light from the far half shifts into longer, redder wavelengths while the light from the near half shifts into shorter, bluer wavelengths.

The shifts in light broaden the absorption line of carbon monoxide within Beta Pictoris b’s light detected here on Earth. The amount of widening allowed  the exoplanet’s rotation rate which will reportedly increase as it gets older, cools then shrinks.

 Beta Pictoris b’s rate of spin will rise to 40 kilometers per second over hundreds of millions of years. By that time a day on the exoplanet will be only 3 hours long. In our solar system—with the exception of Mercury and Venus—the larger planets spin faster.

It’s theorized that this is due to the fact that bigger planets took on more material as they formed which would make the forming planets move faster. The significance of knowing the rotation rates of comparatively young exoplanets like Beta Pictoris b, will permit researchers to create weather maps of their atmospheres.