A new study from an international team of astronomers has found mysterious exoplanets called "hot Jupiters" are more atmospherically diverse than previously thought.
According to Discovery News, hot Jupiters earn their name by being larger than our gas giant and orbiting its host star closer than even Mercury orbits the sun. Previous studies have found no water in these extremely hot atmospheres, but the exoplanets' proximity to their stars also make them difficult to examine.
The new study, published in the journal Nature, seeks to do a better job analyzing these hot Jupiter exoplanets using data from the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes.
"I'm really excited to finally 'see' this wide group of planets together, as this is the first time we've had sufficient wavelength coverage to be able to compare multiple features from one planet to another," study lead author David Sing, of the University of Exeter in the U.K., said in a press release. "We found the planetary atmospheres to be much more diverse than we expected."
The researchers found faint traces of water and other molecules and elements in the atmospheres of the hot Jupiters, but also noticed hazy clouds that were making it difficult to notice such traces.
"The alternative to this is that planets form in an environment deprived of water - but this would require us to completely rethink our current theories of how planets are born," study co-author Jonathan Fortney of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in the release. "Our results have ruled out the dry scenario, and strongly suggest that it's simply clouds hiding the water from prying eyes."
