Distant planet's clouds are mapped

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24348024

Distant planet's clouds are mapped

Astronomers have created the first map of the clouds on a planet outside our Solar System.

The planet in question is Kepler-7b, a large gaseous world like Jupiter, roughly 1,000 light-years away.

The researchers used data from Nasa's Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes to study the exoplanet, which orbits close to its parent star.

Their results suggest the hot giant is marked by high clouds in the west and clear skies in the east.

The findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"By observing this planet with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, we were able to produce a very low-resolution 'map' of this giant, gaseous planet," said co-author Brice-Olivier Demory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, US.

"We wouldn't expect to see oceans or continents on this type of world, but we detected a clear, reflective signature that we interpreted as clouds."

Astronomers have previously been able to make temperature maps of planets orbiting other stars, but this is the first look at cloud structures on a distant world. Kepler-7b is something of an oddity - bigger than Jupiter, but lower in mass - with a density about the same as polystyrene.

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