WASP-96B is a tidally-locked exoplanet between the size of Saturn and Jupiter. This hot, massive planet lies close to its star, orbiting in less than three-and-a-half Earth days. A recent study shows that planets like these can have very different weather, depending on what depth their atmosphere absorbs heat at.
Using numerical simulations, researchers took a detailed look at the possible atmospheric dynamics on this planet. When the atmosphere absorbed heat at a shallow depth — near the outer layers of the planet — a coupled vortex pair formed (left, below). These vortices promenaded westward and completed a circuit around the planet every 11-15 days.
In contrast, deeper heating produced a more-chaotic pattern of four vortices (right, above) that each lasted 3 to 15 days before disappearing, replaced by a new vortex. This atmosphere, they found, was very turbulent, with smaller-scale vortices as well.
Since each weather pattern is visually distinct and carries its own brightness signature, the authors predict that additional observations of WASP-96b with the current generation of telescopes will show which type of heating dominates on the exoplanet. (Image and research credit: J. Skinner et al.; via APS Physics)
