A tiny ultraviolet telescope cubesat has discovered some surprising events in space as it monitors the seven hot Jupiters blown away and evaporating into space.
Tiny cubesat watches hot jupiter evaporating into space (Photo: Universe Today)
14-Inch Satellite Studies Hot Jupiter Evaporating Into Space
SPACE reports that the atmosphere of seven hot Jupiters in exoplanet has been blown away. The 14-inch suitcase-sized cubesat found this amazing and surprising event, as the hot Jupiters are evaporating into space.
Hot Jupiters are gas giants, like Jupiter, except they migrated closer to their respective stars over time and ended up orbiting at a distance of just a few million kilometers. As the Hot Jupiters get closer to the stars, the heat causes the hot Jupiters to become more bloated and bow the atmosphere away. Thus, as it happens hot Jupiters often evaporate into comet-like tails formed by their atmosphere streaming away.
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Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment Launched to Space to Study
According to the same article, the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) was launched in September 2021 and orbits the Earth at an altitude of 525 kilometers. The CUTE is armed with a single ultraviolet CCD camera that watches the events in space such as the transits of giant exoplanets.
CUTE has studied the hot Jupiters and watched them transit their stars and detect the silhouettes of gases. The detection of the hot Jupiter was possible because the material absorbs from the starlight as it blows away from the planets.
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