An artist's impression of PSO J318.5-22. Travel agents are standing by. (credit: MPIA/V.Ch.Quetz)
A distant world 75 million light years from Earth is probably a nice enough place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. OK, you probably wouldn’t even want to visit there. That’s what astronomers have concluded after observing “weather” on an exoplanet for the first time.
Unfortunately, the world in question has dust storms. One might take solace from the fact that there’s also rain on the planet, but alas the rain drops are made of molten iron. Space tourists are advised to bring sturdy umbrellas. There’s also the pesky matter of surface temperatures, which exceed 800 degrees Celsius. And for bikini-clad vacationers hoping to catch some rays in between the clouds, sorry, there actually is no star.
PSO J318.5-22—the technical name of this Jupiter-sized world—is a rogue planet. And while it may not be an ideal vacation world, for astronomers the discovery of even miserable weather on a distant planet is nonetheless a big deal. Until now they’ve not been able to study weather patterns on planets outside of the solar system.
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