Donald Savage

Headquarters, Washington Nov. 27, 2001

(Phone: 202/358-1547)

Nancy Neal
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone: 301/286-0039)

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore
(Phone: 410/338-4514)

RELEASE: 01-232

HUBBLE MEASURES ATMOSPHERE ON WORLD AROUND ANOTHER

STAR

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have

made the first direct detection and chemical analysis of the
atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system. Their unique
observations demonstrate it is possible with Hubble and other
telescopes to measure the chemical makeup of extrasolar
planets' atmospheres and potentially to search for chemical
markers of life beyond Earth.

The planet orbits a yellow, Sun-like star called HD 209458, a

seventh-magnitude star (visible in an amateur telescope) that
lies 150 light-years away in the autumn constellation
Pegasus. Its atmospheric composition was probed when the
planet passed in front of its parent star, allowing
astronomers for the first time ever to see light from the
star filtered through the planet's atmosphere.

Lead investigator David Charbonneau of the California

Institute of Technology, Pasadena, and the Harvard-
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.;
Timothy Brown of the National Center for Atmospheric
Research, Boulder, Colo.; and colleagues used Hubble's
spectrometer (the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, or
STIS) to detect the presence of sodium in the planet's
atmosphere.

"This opens up an exciting new phase of extrasolar planet

exploration, where we can begin to compare and contrast the
atmospheres of planets around other stars," says Charbonneau.
The astronomers actually saw less sodium than predicted for
the Jupiter-class planet, leading to one interpretation that
high-altitude clouds in the alien atmosphere may have blocked
some of the light. The team's findings are to be published in
the Astrophysical Journal.

The Hubble observation was not tuned to look for gases

expected in a life-sustaining atmosphere (which is improbable
for a planet as hot as the one observed). Nevertheless, this
unique observing technique opens a new phase in the
exploration of exoplanets, or extrasolar planets, say
astronomers. Such observations could potentially provide the
first direct evidence for life beyond Earth by measuring
unusual abundances of atmospheric gases caused by the
presence of living organisms.

The planet was discovered in 1999 through its slight

gravitational tug on the star. The planet was estimated to be
70 percent the mass of the giant planet Jupiter, or 220 times
more massive than Earth. Subsequently, astronomers discovered
that the tilt of the planet's orbit makes it pass in front of
the star -- relative to our line-of-sight from Earth --
making it unique among all the approximately 80 extrasolar
planets discovered to date. As the planet passes in front of
the star, it causes the star to dim very slightly for the
duration of the transit. Transit observations by Hubble and
ground-based telescopes confirmed that the planet is
primarily gaseous, rather than liquid or solid, meaning that
the planet is a gas giant, like Jupiter and Saturn.

The planet is an ideal target for repeat observations because

it transits the star every 3.5 days -- which is the extremely
short time it takes the planet to whirl around the star at a
distance of merely four million miles from the star's
surface. This close proximity heats the planet's atmosphere
to a torrid 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius).

Observations of four separate transits were made by Hubble in

search of direct evidence of an atmosphere. During each
transit a small fraction of the star's light on its way to
Earth passed though the planet's atmosphere. When the color
of the light was analyzed by STIS, the telltale "fingerprint"
of sodium was detected. Though the star also has sodium in
its outer layers, STIS precisely measured the added influence
of sodium in the planet's atmosphere.
The team, including Robert Noyes of the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics and Ronald Gilliland of the Space
Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, plans to look at HD
209458 again with Hubble in other colors of the star's
spectrum to see which are filtered by the planet's
atmosphere. They hope eventually to detect methane, water
vapor, potassium and other chemicals in the planet's
atmosphere. Once other transiting giants are found in the
next few years, the team expects to characterize chemical
differences among the atmospheres of these planets.

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by

the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy,
Inc. (AURA), for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space
Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The Hubble Space Telescope is a
project of international co-operation between NASA and the
European Space Agency (ESA). The National Center for
Atmospheric Research is sponsored primarily by the National
Science Foundation.

-end-
NOTE TO EDITORS: Electronic images, illustrations, animations
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