WASP-127b is an exoplanet that is a gas giant. Scientists have recently conducted spectroscopic studies of it and discovered that incredibly powerful winds rage in the atmosphere. Their speed reaches 33,000 kilometers per hour.

Extremely powerful winds on the planet WASP-127b
Astronomers have discovered extremely powerful winds blowing at the equator of the giant exoplanet WASP-127b. Reaching speeds of up to 33,000 km/h, the winds form the fastest jet stream of this type ever measured on the planet. The discovery was made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile, and it provides a unique insight into the weather patterns of a distant world.
Tornadoes, cyclones and hurricanes wreak havoc on Earth, but now scientists have discovered planetary winds on a very different scale, far beyond the Solar System. Since its discovery in 2016, astronomers have been studying the weather on WASP-127b, a giant gas planet more than 500 light-years from Earth.
The planet is slightly larger than Jupiter, but has only a fraction of its mass, making it “puffy.” An international team of astronomers has made an unexpected discovery: supersonic winds are raging on the planet.
At 9 kilometers per second (that’s almost 33,000 km/h), the jet wind travels almost six times faster than the planet rotates. “This is something we haven’t seen before,” says Lisa Nortmann, a scientist at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and lead author of the study. It is the fastest wind ever measured in the jet stream that orbits the planet. By comparison, the fastest wind ever measured in the solar system was found on Neptune, which moved at “only” 0.5 kilometers per second (1,800 km/h).
Creation of a weather map of the planet
The team, whose findings are published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics, mapped the weather and composition of WASP-127b using the CRIRES+ instrument on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) VLT telescope. By measuring how the light from the host star passes through the planet’s upper atmosphere, they managed to trace its composition. Their results confirm the presence of water vapor and carbon monoxide molecules in the planet’s atmosphere.
But when the team tracked the speed of this material in the atmosphere, to their surprise, they saw a double peak, which indicates that one side of the atmosphere is moving toward us and the other side is moving away from us at high speed. The researchers concluded that this unexpected result could be explained by the powerful jet winds around the equator.
Continuing to develop their weather map, the team also found that the poles were colder than the rest of the planet. There is also a slight difference in temperature between the morning and evening sides of WASP-127b. “This shows that the planet has complex weather patterns just like Earth and other planets of our own system,” added Fei Yan, co-author of the study and a professor at China University of Science and Technology.
New tools for exoplanet exploration
The field of exoplanet research is growing rapidly. Until a few years ago, astronomers could only measure the mass and radius of planets outside the Solar System. Nowadays, telescopes such as the VLT already allow scientists to map the weather on these distant worlds and analyze their atmospheres.
Understanding the dynamics of these exoplanets helps us investigate mechanisms such as heat redistribution and chemical processes, improving our understanding of planet formation and potentially shedding light on the origin of our own Solar System.
Curiously, only ground-based observatories can conduct such studies now, as instruments on space telescopes don’t have the necessary accuracy to measure velocity. ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, which is being built next to the VLT in Chile, and its ANDES instrument will allow researchers to delve even deeper into weather patterns on distant planets.
According to phys.org