The observations represent the first time that so-called "heavy metals" -- elements heavier than hydrogen and helium -- have been spotted escaping from a
hot Jupiter, a large, gaseous exoplanet very close to its star.
Exoplanet CoRoT-2b, discovered a decade ago by a French-led space observatory mission, is also called as"
hot Jupiter." Unlike Jupiter, the so-called
hot Jupiter circle astonishingly close to their host star so close that it typically takes fewer than three days to complete an orbit.
RESEARCHERS HAVE found strong evidence of titanium oxide (TiO) in the atmosphere of
hot Jupiter WASP-19b --a Jupiter-mass planet with a surface temperature of 2000K that orbits its host star in only 19 hours.
The planet is as
hot Jupiter, at least as large as the Jupiter in our solar system, but with around 20% less mass.
The planet is a "
hot Jupiter" gas giant that hugs its star so closely one of its years lasts 1.3 days on Earth.
The planet is known as a '
hot Jupiter' due to its size, which is similar to that of Jupiter, and short distance from its sun; it takes just 2.2 days to orbit its parent star.
Because a
hot Jupiter is too close to its star to separate the planet's light from that of the star, the researchers adapted a Doppler technique previously used to detect low mass-ratio spectroscopic binary stars.
Advances in the technique used to scan the atmosphere of this "
hot Jupiter" could help scientists determine how many of the billions of planets in the Milky Way contain water like Earth, researchers said, Fox News reported.
"It looks like very good and careful work," says Eric Rubenstein, president of the technology company Image Insight, who developed the
hot Jupiter hypothesis while at Yale University in the late 1990s.
In the case of a transit of a '
hot Jupiter', when the planet goes behind the star, there is a secondary eclipse of emitted or reflected light.
Summary: This '
hot Jupiter', now named Qatar-1b, adds to the growing list of alien planets orbiting distant stars, or exoplanets.
A "
hot Jupiter" planet with such a short orbital period is very rare, the present example being only the second.