New technique allows analysis of clouds around exoplanets
Meteorologists sometimes struggle to accurately predict the weather here on Earth, but now we can find out how cloudy it is on planets outside our solar system, thanks to researchers at MIT. In a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at MIT describe a technique that analyzes data from NASA’s Kepler space observatory to determine the types of clouds on planets that orbit other stars, known as exoplanets. The team, led by Kerri Cahoy, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, has already used the method to determine the properties of clouds on the exoplanet Kepler-7b. The planet, a gas giant more than 5.5 million miles from Earth, is known as a “hot Jupiter,” as temperatures in its atmosphere hover at around 1,700 kelvins. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft was designed to search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. It...