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Upsilon Andromeda b was discovered in 1996. It is what's known as a "hot-Jupiter," a gas giant circles its star in a very tight orbit, in this case 4.6 days. Two other planets also circle Upsilon Andromeda, but farther out.
With one side always hot as lava and the other chilled possibly below freezing, Upsilon Andromeda b is a giant gas planet [image] that orbits extremely close to Upsilon Andromeda, a star 40 light-years from our solar system in the constellation Andromeda.
"If you were moving across the planet from the night side to the day side, the temperature jump would be equivalent to leaping into a volcano..."
:shock: Extreme space explorers might like that, lol!
It's also possible the planet is tidally locked to its star the way the Moon is with Earth, so that one side of the planet always faces-and is always heated by-its star.
Article includes an animation.
the researchers calculated that temperatures on the sunlit side of the Upsilon Andromeda b were between 2,550 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,400 to 1,650 degrees Celsius) but only minus 4 to 450 degrees Fahrenheit (20 to 230 degrees Celsius) on the dark side
(By comparison, our Jupiter "maintains an even temperature all around")
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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