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Artist’s View of a Super-Jupiter around a Brown Dwarf (Annotated)
This is an illustration of a planet that is four times the mass of Jupiter and orbits 5 billion miles from a brown dwarf companion object (the bright red star seen in the background). The rotation rate of this "super-Jupiter" has been measured by studying subtle variations in the infrared light the hot planet radiates through a variegated, cloudy atmosphere. The planet completes one rotation every 10 hours – about the same rate as Jupiter. Because the planet is young, it is still contracting under gravity and radiating heat. The atmosphere is so hot that it rains molten glass and, at lower altitudes, molten iron.
Because the planet is only 170 light-years away, many of the bright background stars that can be seen from Earth can be seen from the planet's location in our galaxy, including Sirius, Fomalhaut, and Alpha Centauri. Our sun is a faint star in the background, located midway between Procyon and Altair.
Related Images & Videos
Artist's View of a Super-Jupiter around a Brown Dwarf (2M1207)
This is an illustration of a planet that is four times the mass of Jupiter and orbits 5 billion miles from a brown-dwarf companion (the bright red object seen in the background). The rotation rate of this "super-Jupiter" has been measured by studying subtle variations in the...
Brown Dwarf 2M1207A and Companion
[Left] – This is a Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared-light image of a brown dwarf located 170 light-years away from Earth. The object is no more than 30 times the mass of Jupiter, making it too small to sustain nuclear fusion to shine as a star. [Right] – When the glow of the...
Photometry of Super-Jupiter 2M1207b
This graph plots small changes in the infrared brightness of a super-Jupiter as measured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The S-shaped curve is extrapolated from the data points. Its sinusoidal shape suggests that brightness changes are a result of a 10-hour rotation period...
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Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
