First Cloudy Alien Planet Spotted From Earth
Artist’s conception of a cloud map of Kepler-7b (left) in comparison to Jupiter (right) NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT Via Universe Today Call it cloudy with a low chance of meatballs. The alien world Kepler-7b — a very reflective world in big telescopes — has clouds in its upper atmosphere. And scientists have actually been able to map those out, despite the planet’s great distance from Earth (at least 1,000 light-years away.) It’s the first time scientists have been able to map out clouds on a world outside of the solar system. If we can see clouds, then we can begin to think about what a planet’s climate will be, making this an important milestone in understanding the conditions on other worlds. “Kepler-7b reflects much more light than most giant planets we’ve found, which we attribute to clouds in the upper atmosphere,” stated Thomas Barclay,...