Hubble makes first detection of an organic molecule in an exo-planetary atmosphere!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/s...g_20080319.html

Now...that is something!

They also detected water vapor...all the more astonishing considering that the planet has a two day orbital period around its star.

I wonder how well we understand the thermal inertia of these bodies. It's surprising that chemicals can hang together under all that heat and radiation. It would be very interesting to know the planet's rotation period; seems easier to explain the compounds if it's rotating (which provides cooling), but being so close you'd think it would be tidally locked, unless it just got to where it is fairly recently.

Many mysteries here.

Yes, it is tidally locked...

Astonishing precision and stability of the measurement of 1 part in 10,000!

CO should be dominant, given the high temperature of 1000 K, so I'm surprised that so much methane was detected (50 ppm)...

HD189733 from the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey that was completed in 1958.

There's a little motion of the star between the new and old image http://www.greuti.ch/astro/hd189733b.gif
Another drift from a star can be seen in the top left corner of the inserted old image.

Maybe they're not hanging together. Perhaps they're continually brought up from below? Or re-combining on the night side? Might there be a cometary plume of material streaming away from the planet, and the water and methane re-combining only after their constituents have been stripped away?

I freely confess I've got very little to no clue when it comes to stuff like this; I'm just throwing out a few wild ideas. (Some of which might be testable!)

That's as good an explanation of any that I've heard lately.


Nah, UV light from the parent star will prevent any molecules from forming.