{"id":206692,"date":"2025-02-18T14:13:32","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T20:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/unraveling-the-mysteries-of-wasp-121b-a-3d-map-of-alien-weather"},"modified":"2025-02-18T14:13:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T20:13:32","slug":"unraveling-the-mysteries-of-wasp-121b-a-3d-map-of-alien-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/unraveling-the-mysteries-of-wasp-121b-a-3d-map-of-alien-weather","title":{"rendered":"Unraveling the Mysteries of WASP-121b: A 3D Map of Alien Weather"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we found was surprising: a jet stream rotates material around the planet\u2019s equator, while a separate flow at lower levels of the atmosphere moves gas from the hot side to the cooler side,\u201d said Dr. Julia Victoria Seidel.<\/p>\n

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What can a 3D map of an exoplanet\u2019s atmosphere teach scientists about its weather patterns? This is what a recent study<\/a> published in Nature<\/em> hopes to address as an international team of researchers successfully produced the first 3D map of an exoplanet\u2019s atmosphere, which is a groundbreaking achievement and will help scientists gain new insights into the formation and evolution of exoplanet atmospheres throughout the cosmos.<\/p>\n

For the study, the researchers used the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope (ESO\u2019s VLT) to observe WASP-121b, nicknamed Tylos, which is designated as an ultra-hot Jupiter that orbits its parent star in only 1.3 days (30 hours) and is located approximately 880 light-years from Earth. Due to its extremely close orbit, Tylos is tidally locked to its parent star, meaning one side is always facing it, resulting in searing temperatures on the sunlit side and incredibly cold temperatures on the far side.<\/p>\n

In the end, the researchers successfully produced a 3D map of Tylos\u2019 atmosphere, revealing weather patterns that include high-velocity winds carrying titanium and iron around the exoplanet, which becomes even more turbulent as the winds cross from the far side to the day side of Tylos. Additionally, this also marks the first time astronomers have produced a 3D map of an exoplanet\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat we found was surprising: a jet stream rotates material around the planet\u2019s equator, while a separate flow at lower levels of the atmosphere moves gas from the hot side to the cooler side,\u201d said Dr. Julia Victoria Seidel. What can a 3D map of an exoplanet\u2019s atmosphere teach scientists about its weather patterns? This [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":706,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}