A team of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder used BASA's Hubble Space Telescope to create the most detailed global map of a planet twice the size of Jupiter, hot enough to melt steel and 260 light-years away.

The data from Hubble suggest that the planet, dubbed WASP-43b, is not suitable to be colonized. It is a world of extremes, with its night time coolest temperature at 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and its hottest daytime temperature of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Both temperatures are hot enough to melt steel.

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The map offers data on the traces the amount and distribution of water on the planet and the temperatures at various layers of the atmosphere. The findings have consequences for comprehending the dynamics of the atmosphere and the genesis of giant worlds like Jupiter, said Jacob Bean, the team leader from the University of Chicago.

"These measurements have opened the door for a new kind of comparative planetology," he added.

There are no surface features such as oceans or continents on WASP-43b that can be used to monitor its rotation as it is a sphere of predominantly hot hydrogen gas, said Jean-Michel Désert, a CU-Boulder assistant professor and the second author of the new study. The gaseous planet's extreme temperature range between nightside and dayside can be used by far-away onlookers to record the passage of time, he said.

"WASP-43b is extreme in many ways," said Désert. "It's the size of Jupiter with twice its mass. Its orbit around its host star, called an orange dwarf, takes only about 19 hours - the blink of an eye compared to the 365 days it takes Earth to orbit the sun."

He also said that the study is enthralling to those aiming to comprehend how planets are formed.

"Basically it is like taking a planet like Jupiter into a giant laboratory, then warming it at such a high temperature that all of the atoms and molecules comprising its atmosphere are in a gas phase."

TagsNASA, Hubble Space Telescope, planet, Gas planet, WASP-43b, Gas giant, Planetary science