Weird World: Titanium Spied in Giant Alien Planet's Skies

[Judi Lynn]

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | September 13, 2017 01:27pm ET

For the first time ever, titanium oxide has been spotted in an exoplanet's skies, a new study reports.

Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile detected the substance in the atmosphere of WASP-19b, a huge, scorching-hot planet located 815 light-years from Earth.

"The presence of titanium oxide in the atmosphere of WASP-19b can have substantial effects on the atmospheric temperature structure and circulation," study co-author Ryan MacDonald, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge in England, said in a statement. [The Strangest Alien Planets (Gallery)]

One possible effect is "thermal inversion." If enough titanium oxide is present, the stuff can keep heat from entering or exiting an atmosphere, causing upper layers to be hotter than lower layers, researchers said. (This phenomenon occurs in Earth's stratosphere, but the culprit is ozone, not titanium oxide.)

More:
https://www.space.com/38137-hot-jupiter-alien-planet-titanium-skies.html?utm_source=notification

[Warpy]

1. I think as we discover things about exoplanets

the universe is just going to get weirder and weirder.

While it's a great leap of illogic for this particular planet, I can envision a scenario where a planet might have this in its atmosphere and be quite balmy at the surface, at least cool enough for thermophilic bacteria in liquid water near the poles, if nothing more advanced.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. That's one Hell of a hot planet -- TiO is usually observed in stars.

Hope they really did get the absorption spectra from the planet separated from that of the atmosphere around the star. TiO is the first marker for 'cool' stars, because it manages to hold together at temps where most molecules dissociate to atoms or plasma.

Ah, things may not be so clear as that article suggests -- see https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2015/03/aa24794-14.pdf (BTW, they used Doppler shifts to separate the spectral lines of the exoplanet from those of the primary. Should have thought of that.)