Report #1 - February 2015
The Planet With Two Hells in One
"COROT 7B HELL PLANET EXOPLANET" Youtube Video
An artist's interpretation of CoRoT-7b.
Located 489 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Monoceros, SC Messier digs deeper into a "planet from hell." Gathering radar signals and reporting from the scene, SC Messier reports about an exoplanet known as CoRoT-7b. This planet was discoverd by Satelite CoRoT in February of 2009, Since it doesn't rotate, most likely due to its close proximity to its sun, only one side of CoRoT-7b always faces its sunlike star, which is a yellow dwarf that is slightly smaller and cooler than our sun and believed to be 1.5 billion years old. As a result, CoRoT-7b has two sides: its daylight side and dark side.
Hell #1 - The Daylight Side
CoRoT-7b is located approximately 60 times closer to its sunlike star than Earth and takes about 20.4 hours to complete an entire revolution. As a result of CoRoT-7b's closeness, its star appears almost 360 times larger in its sky than our sun in Earth. Such characteristics make for the most deadliest weather conditions on CoRoT-7b's daylight side, which is not only covered in molten lava, but is partically gaseous. With temperatures higher than 4500 degrees, making it dangerous and nearly impossible for SC Messier to get near the burning planet, its atmposphere, mostly evaporated, is turned to vaporized rock. In addition to these vaporized chunks of rock, small condensed pebbles, formed by cool fronts, rain down on CoRoT-7b's surface in storms. Imagine trading in soft rain drops for hard pieces of rock!
"COROT 7B HELL PLANET EXOPLANET" Youtube Video
An artist's impression of CoRoT-7b's daylight side
An artist's impression of sunrise over CoRoT-7b
Hell #2 - The Dark Side
Behind the open volcano display the daylight side awaits the dark side, yet another terrifying, dangerous, uninhabitable version of hell. While things may be a little calmer on hell #2's side, the dark side isn't called another hell for nothing. This side never sees the sun, dropping temperatures down hundred of degrees below zero; such temperatures are capable of freezing lava into hard rock! In fact, minerals from the planet's gaseous-like atmosphere freeze in this side of CoRoT-7b, creating star-side and space-side minerals. It's surface, while not melted, is covered with mountains and very rocky surfaces.
Computer-animated view of CoRoT-7b's dark side
"COROT 7B HELL PLANET EXOPLANET" Youtube Video
The Shocking Truth - What's So Special About CoRoT-7b?
SC Messier emphasizes that the fact of the matter is: out of all 650+ exoplanets discovered outside our solar system, CoRoT-7b is by far one of the most similar to Earth, making the planet an interesting and worthy hotstop to report from. Its density and terrestial surface is nearly identical to Earth's. CoRoT-7b is observed by SC Messier to be 70 percent larger and have a mass 4.8 times greater than Earth's, making the exoplanet known as a "Super Earth" planet. However, while CoRoT-7b may share several characteristics that make Earth habitable, its lack of liquid water and horrid conditions make the chance of life on the planet little to impossible. On a brighter note, the discovery of an Earth-like planet outside our solar system has lead astronomers to believe in the possibility of there being other planets in the universe that house life. Rest assure SC Messier will tour around other interesting exoplanets that stand out from the crowd.
CoRoT-7b in comparision to our moon and planet
If you're interested...
Watch the rest of the "COROT 7B HELL PLANET EXOPLANET" Youtube Video to learn more about the orgin of CoRoT-7b.
"COROT 7B HELL PLANET EXOPLANET" Youtube Video
SOURCES:
http://www.astro.cz/clanek/3954
http://www.outerspaceuniverse.org/5-notable-planets-located-outside-our-solar-system.html
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2010/earthlike-exoplanet.html
http://www.space.com/7291-rocky-world-confirmed-star.html
http://www.solarsystemquick.com/universe/corot-7b.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phiJLBM5AQI