A 63 light years from Earth is HD 189733b. And in this exoplanet forgettable name, winds blow at the amazing speed of 8,690 km / h.
They are twenty times faster than the most powerful gusts ever recorded on Earth. And seven times the speed of sound.
The discovery was made by researchers at the University of Warwick, in the UK, who first measured and mapped the climate system of an exoplanet.
20 times faster than on Earth
Winds move around Ecuador of this celestial body from the face illuminated by the light from the star to the side where it is night.
"While we knew we had winds exoplanets, never before have we been able to measure and map directly the climate system," said Tom Louden, principal investigator of the study, published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The measurement was made by Harps telescope observations in La Silla Observatory in Chile.
"The wind speed HD 189733b was measured using a high resolution spectroscopy of the absorption of sodium in its atmosphere. As part of the atmosphere of HD 189733b is towards or away from Earth, the Doppler effect changes the wavelength of this function, which measures the speed. "
The Doppler effect is the change in frequency of a wave produced by the relative movement of the source relative to the observer.
In this case, the moving object is the extrasolar planet.
"The surface of the star (in which rotates around the exoplanet) is brighter in the center than at the edge," said Louden.
"As the planet moves in front of the star, the relative amount of light in different parts was blocked by changes in the atmosphere of exoplanet".
"What we did was to first use this information to measure the velocities on opposite sides of the body, which has given us the map of speeds," said the scientist.
According to the researchers, this work may help to study in greater detail the wind currents in other Earth-like planets outside the solar system.
Popular exoplanet
Located in the constellation Vulpecula and discovered in 2005, HD 189733b belongs to a category of planets called "hot Jupiters".
They are so called because they have a similar mass to Jupiter and its orbit will take you in less than three days.
HD 189733b is 10% larger than Jupiter and has a temperature of 1,800 ° C.
Because of its size because it is relatively close to our solar system, it is one of exoplanets most studied by astronomers.