Hubble discovered first Extra-Solar organic molecule
Hubble discovered first Extra-Solar organic molecule
Hubble the Space Telescope has discovered the first organic molecule on a planet which is not in our solar system. On this NASA said that this breakthrough could be a major step toward discovering life on other planets. The finding comes from extra-solar planet HD 189733 b, a gaseous “hot Jupiter” locked in a tight orbit around a star 63 light-years away. HD 189733 b is one of few extra-solar planets suited for such measurements. It transits or crosses in front of its parent star every 2.2 days, blocking more than two percent of the star’s light.
Mark said that the big news is that we were able to do this at allâ€. David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who was not part of the team, called the detection “both persuasive and important.†“Hubble was never been designed to make measurements like this,†she said. “This is pushing the telescope to its limits.†The planet is called a “hot Jupiter” because it is about the size of the giant planet in our solar system but is closer to its sun than planet Mercury is to ours. It takes the planet just two days to orbit its sun.
Its temperature is about 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, considered to be too hot for life as we know it. There is, however, one aspect that makes this planet unhabitable, it is too hot to offer any chances of life on it. The 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit in its atmosphere make it very unlikely to sustain life.
Tags: David Charbonneau, David Charbonneau astronomer, Extra-Solar molecule, Extra-Solar organic molecule, Harvard-Smithsonian, Hubble, Hubble Space Telescope, Jupiter, solar system
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