Global Temperature Map of WASP-43b

This is a temperature map of exoplanet WASP-43b. The gas giant planet orbits very close to its parent star with a period of 19.5 hours. Because the planet keeps one side facing its star, there are huge temperature extremes between the day and night sides. The white-colored region on the daytime side is 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The nighttime-side temperatures drop below 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This steep gradient is in stark contrast to the predominantly uniform temperatures of the solar system's giant planets. Infrared observations with the Hubble Space Telescope measured how temperatures change with both altitude and longitude on the planet.

About the data

The image was created from Hubble data from the following proposal: 13467 PI: J. Bean (University of Chicago) et al.

Members of the science team include: K. Stevenson (University of Chicago), J.-M. Désert (CASA/University of Colorado), M. Line (University of California, Santa Cruz), J. Bean (University of Chicago), J. Fortney (University of California, Santa Cruz), A. Showman and T. Kataria (University of Arizona), L. Kreidberg (University of Chicago), P.R. McCullough (STScI/JHU), G. Henry (Tennessee State University), D. Charbonneau (Harvard University), A. Burrows (Princeton University), S. Seager (MIT), N. Madhusudhan (University of Cambridge, UK), M. Williamson (Tennessee State University), and D. Homeier (CNRS/University of Lyons).