This handout picture released on August 11 by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center
Posted on 08/14/2011 11:29:49 AM PDT by NYer
A planet orbiting a distant star is darker than coal, reflecting less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, according to a paper published on Thursday.
The strange world, TrES-2b, is a gas giant the size of Jupiter, rather than a solid, rocky body like Earth or Mars, astronomers said.
It closely orbits the star GSC 03549-02811, located about 750 light years away in the direction of the constellation of Draco the Dragon.
"TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it's truly an alien world," David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a press release issued by Britain's Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).
First spotted five years ago, TrES-2b races around its star at a distance of just five million kilometres (three million miles).
This is scorchingly close when compared to Earth's 150-million-km (93-million-mile) distance from the Sun and Jupiter's 778 million kms (483 million miles).
So fierce is the heat that the exoplanet's atmosphere is cooked to more than 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit).
Signatures from its atmosphere point to the presence of light-absorbing chemicals like vaporised sodium and potassium or titanium oxide.
But none of these substances can explain the planet's darkness, which is more extreme than any planet or moon in our own Solar System.
"It's not clear what is responsible for making this planet so extraordinarily dark," said David Spiegel of Princeton University.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
It's obviously a big charcoal briquet....
We have been greedily swallowing the BS, and begging for more, from these people for so long that they are unashamed to say anything, and will say it with a straight face.
I could be mistaken, but I didn’t think it is that shameful to say that a certain planet has a lower reflectivity than any other known. But I might be on the wrong thread.
Planet Pelosi
Really interesting. Thanks for posting.
Planet Detroit.
Boy O Boy.
It was just a short while ago that an object 63 trillion times brighter than the sun was found. Yup...63 trillion times! (I don't know how that is possible)
Nah, you're on the correct thread.
This planet is the end result of an ecological movement.
Inside joke for avid viewers of the original Star Trek series.
YOU BEAT ME TO IT YOU AWFUL PERSON!!1!
Racist!
No one ever said that when our president was white. Bigot!
(Now that Obama has claimed to be another MLK we best get use to screaming now 'til Nov. 6, 2012.)
Blacker than coal... sounds like Washington.
Why not call the planet... oh... Congressonia?
Romulan cloaking device.
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