Exoplanet Mapping

It's not the easiest task in the world, and the result is less than spectacular, but Hubble has taken the best weather map of an exoplanet to date.  The planet is WASP-43B, a hot Jupiter with twice Jupiter's mass that takes only 19 hours to orbit its star.  In the sun, temperatures reach 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, while the night half is only a third of that, at 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  That's almost cold right there.

Hubble was also able to find water vapor in the planet's atmosphere, which doesn't do the planet much good, seeing as it's hot enough to melt quite a lot of metals, let alone water, but it does mean that we can detect water vapor in the atmospheres of exoplanets, which will come in handy whenever we start peering at smaller, cooler worlds.  You know, ones that might have life.

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