Astronomer detects atmosphere of extra-solar planet

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The dotted line shows the planets orbit around the star HD189733. The planet orbits the star once every 2.2 Earth days crossing the face of the star well below its equator. The small circles indicate the planets location during each of Seth Redfields ...
The dotted line shows the planet's orbit around the star HD189733. The planet orbits the star once every 2.2 Earth days, crossing the face of the star well below its equator. The small circles indicate the planet’s location during each of Seth Redfield’s more than 200 HET observations over the course of one Earth year. The red circles indicate observations during transit; the rest of the circles denote out-of-transit observations. Credit: S. Redfield/T. Jones/McDonald Obs.

University of Texas at Austin astronomer and Hubble Fellow Seth Redfield has used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory to make the first ground-based detection of the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system.


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