[NormsRevenge]

Artist's view of extrasolar planet HD 209458b. Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the existence of a baked object that could be called a "cometary planet." The gas giant planet, named HD 209458b, is orbiting so close to its star that its heated atmosphere is escaping into space. Observations taken with Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) suggest powerful stellar winds are sweeping the cast-off atmospheric material behind the scorched planet and shaping it into a comet-like tail. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

[epluribus_2]

orbits a star, has a tail. Why is it not a comet?

[kbennkc]

[NormsRevenge]

It’s been under observation for years..

this from 2004

Dying Planet Leaks Carbon-Oxygen
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/newworlds/Osiris_leaks.html

# FACTS ABOUT HD 209458b Diameter: 1.3 times that of Jupiter.
# Mass: 0.7 Jupiter masses, 220 Earth masses.
# Orbit: One-eighth the size of Mercury’s orbit around the Sun (7 million kilometers). 3.5 days.
# Belongs to a type of extrasolar planet known as ‘hot Jupiters’ - Giant, gaseous planets in low orbits.
# First confirmed transiting extrasolar planet.
# Transit: Every 3.5 days, 3 hours in duration. Eclipses 1.5% of the face of the parent star.
# Surface temperature: About 1,000 degrees Celsius.

THE ATMOSPHERE
# Complex: sodium in the lower atmosphere, evaporating hydrogen detected in upper atmosphere, oxygen and carbon also in the upper atmosphere.
# Extended: During the eclipses the upper atmosphere covers 15% of the face of the parent star.
# What is causing the atmosphere to escape? The planet’s outer atmosphere is extended and heated so much by the nearby star that it starts to escape the planet’s gravity. Hydrogen, carbon and oxygen boil off in the planet’s upper atmosphere under the searing heat of the star.
# Astronomers estimate the amount of hydrogen gas escaping HD 209458b to be at least 10,000 tonnes per second.
# Hydrogen tail is 200,000 kilometers long.
# Evaporation mechanism so tremendous that a whole new class of extrasolar planets, the chthonian planets - the cores of evaporated gas giants, is proposed.

[Trueblackman]

Well if none of you are not going to say it, I will———We are DOOMED!!!

[centurion316]

If you want to survive in this cruel universe, you have to be born on the right planet. Those born on the wrong planet will, of course, be eligible for reparations and preferential treatment by the Obama Administration and will be registered to vote.

[SunkenCiv]

Thank you NormsRevenge!

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks NormsRevenge! If I weren't keen on getting my big ass out of the house for a change, instead of spending the entire summer on FR, I'd post my archival stuff on the detected tails of our Moon, of the Earth itself, of Venus...

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[NonValueAdded]

proto-Mercury