SETI bioastro: Observational Consequences of Hydrodynamic Flows on Hot Jupiters

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Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0702700

From: Jonathan Langton [view email]

Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 01:02:56 GMT (103kb,D)

Observational Consequences of Hydrodynamic Flows on Hot Jupiters

Authors: Jonathan Langton, Gregory Laughlin

Comments: To be published in ApJ 657, L113

We use a grid-based shallow water model to simulate the atmospheric dynamics
of the transiting hot Jupiter HD 209458b. Under the usual assumption that
the planet is in synchronous rotation with zero obliquity, a steady state is
reached with a well-localized cold spot centered 76 degrees east of the
antistellar point. This represents a departure from predictions made by
previous simulations in the literature that used the shallow water
formalism; we find that the disagreement is explained by the factor of 30
shorter radiative timescale used in our model. We also examine the case that
the planet is in Cassini state 2, in which the expected obliquity is ~90
degrees. Under these circumstances, a periodic equilibrium is reached, with
the temperature slightly leading the solar forcing. Using these temperature
distributions, we calculate disk-integrated bolometric infrared light curves
from the planet. The light curves for the two models are surprisingly
similar, despite large differences in temperature patterns in the two cases.
In the zero-obliquity case, the intensity at the minimum is 66% of the
maximum intensity, with the minimum occuring 72 degrees ahead of transit. In
the high-obliquity case, the minimum occurs 54 degrees ahead of transit,
with an intensity of 58% of the maximum.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0702700

• Previous message: LARRY KLAES: "SETI bioastro: Hyperfast pulsars as the remnants of massive stars ejected from young star clust"

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