Exoplanets are planets that lie beyond our own solar system and revolve around other stars many light years away. In the past two decades, thousands have been discovered, most of them with NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.
A light-year is a measure of relative distance, somewhere that’s one year away if you’re traveling at the speed of light. That speed is equal to almost 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 mps) or over 1 billion kilometers per hour (670 million mph). So you have to travel a long way at high speed to see this huge ball of ice.
So far, the fastest speed we’ve ever reached in space occurred with New Horizons, a space probe launched in 2006 to conduct a flyby study of Pluto, its moons, and the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons sped along at over 58,000 kilometers per hour (36,000 mph), a far cry from the speed of light. So you can see that we don’t have the technology yet to visit our nearest neighboring system only a few light-years away.
6. OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb The Iceball Planet
OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is an icy exoplanet that can be found a whopping 13,000 light-years from our solar system. Its temperatures range from -220 degrees Celsius (-364 °F) to -186 degrees Celsius (-302 °F), which is why it’s sometimes called the “iceball planet.”
A light-year is a measure of relative distance, somewhere that’s one year away if you’re traveling at the speed of light. That speed is equal to almost 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 mps) or over 1 billion kilometers per hour (670 million mph). So you have to travel a long way at high speed to see this huge ball of ice.
So far, the fastest speed we’ve ever reached in space occurred with New Horizons, a space probe launched in 2006 to conduct a flyby study of Pluto, its moons, and the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons sped along at over 58,000 kilometers per hour (36,000 mph), a far cry from the speed of light. So you can see that we don’t have the technology yet to visit our nearest neighboring system only a few light-years away.
5. 55 Cancri E
Size: about 2 Earths
Orbital period: .7 Earth days
“Strange things transpire in the twilight zone, and stranger still is the planet Jenssen.”
Also
known as Jenssen, this planet is 40 light years away and is most
famously known for being 1/3 diamond. This could be the result of an
atmosphere that’s mostly carbon, allowing the heat and pressure from
both its sun and its interior to compress the planet’s mass into
diamond. It is currently valued at 26.9 nonillion dollars (one nonillion
is 10³⁰).
Similar
to CoRot-7 b, Jenssen is tidal locked and has one side of the planet
that always faces the sun and the other which is perpetually in
darkness. It’s so close to its star that water cannot exist in a liquid
state and instead exists in a supercritical state — a strange behavior
somewhere between a liquid and a gas. Whether on the ridiculously hot
side of the planet where temperatures reach 4,000 degrees F or in the
dark “twilight zone”, there’s no chance you’ll survive on Jenssen. The
added kick here is that the Hubble detected what could be hydrogen
cyanide oozing from below the planet’s surface, giving us a superheated
poisonous fluid.
4. Kepler-22b: New Earth
One of the most promising and early findings from
Kepler is the Kepler 22b. 600 light years away from earth it’s twice the
size of Earth and should have temperatures around 72 degrees
Fahrenheit. This planet is considered a “super-Earth” and is within the
habitable zone of its star. Its star is within the Lyra and Cygnus
constellations and shines 25% less bright than our sun.
Scientists think that the planet may have a
rocky core and be covered in an ocean like Neptune. But life on the
planet isn’t out of the question yet. Kepler deputy science chief stated
that “It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that life could exist in
such an ocean.”
3. WASP-12b
WASP-12b is an extrasolar planet orbiting the star WASP-12, discovered by the SuperWASP planetary transit survey. Its discovery was announced on April 1, 2008.[2] Due to its extremely close orbit to its star, it has one of the lowest densities for exoplanets ('inflated' by the flux of energy from the star). The planet takes only a little over a day to orbit the star, in contrast to 365 days for the Earth to orbit the Sun. Its distance from the star (approximately 2,115,000 miles) is only 1/44 the Earth’s distance from the Sun, with an eccentricity the same as Jupiter's. On 3 December 2013, scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) reported detecting water in the atmosphere of the exoplanet.[6][7] In July 2014, NASA announced finding very dry atmospheres on three exoplanets (HD 189733b, HD 209458b, WASP-12b) orbiting sun-like stars.
2. TrES-2b: Coal Black
Found during the Transatlantic Exoplanet Survey,
TrES-2b is one of the darkest planets we’ve ever been able to see.
Similarly sized to Jupiter, this coal black planet is less reflective
than black acrylic paint. Jupiter, on the other hand, reflects more than
a third of the sunlight that reaches it.
TrEs-2b
is also burning up as it orbits its star at only three million miles.
It’s not clear what makes the planet so dark. There are hues of red that
emit a faint glow. The darkened planet is 750 light-years away in the
Draco constellation.
1. GJ 504 b: Pure Pink
NASA scientists discovered one of the youngest and
most interesting planets in GJ 504 b. Only 57 light years away from
Earth, the exoplanet is thought to be only 100-200 million years old.
The insights into this planet are giving astronomers a first-hand look
into planet development. According to infrared cameras, it’s a deep
shade of pink. It also has fewer clouds than the majority of observed
gas-giants.
Michael McElwain, who was part of the discovery team stated that: “If
we could travel to this giant planet, we would see a world still
glowing from the heat of its formation with a color reminiscent of a
dark cherry blossom, a dull magenta.” According to current models, gas
giants usually form within a certain range from their host star.GJ 504 b's spectral type was originally projected to be late T or early Y, but a follow-up study estimated that a T8 spectral type was the best fit. Its effective temperature is 544±10 К (271±10 °C), much cooler than previously imaged exoplanets with a clear planetary origin. The angular separation of the planet from its parent star is about 2.5 arcseconds, corresponding to a projected separation of 43.5 AU, which is nearly nine times the distance between Jupiter and the Sun, which poses a challenge to theoretical ideas of how giant planets form. This planet is seen as an excellent target for detailed spectroscopic characterization due to its proximity to Earth and its wide separation.
