Iota Draconis b

Iota Draconis b is an extrasolar planet orbiting the orange Giant Iota Draconis all 511 days. Due to its mass is assumed that it is a gas planet.

Discovery

The planet was discovered by Sabine Frink and employees in 2001. Detection was performed using the radial velocity method. He was the first planet was detected by a giant star. This was seen as evidence that planets can survive the transfer of their host star from the main sequence in the group of giant stars.

Circulation and mass

The planet orbits its star at an average distance of about 1.3 astronomical units. Due to its high eccentricity of 0.71 he approaches the periastron up to 0.4 AE, and removed again at about 2 AU. Iota Draconis b has a mass of at least 8.8 Jupiter masses (2800 Earth masses ). It could well be that the mass is significantly higher and Iota Draconis b is a brown dwarf.

Climate and composition

It is estimated that there is on the planet a temperature between 1100 K ( 800 ° C ) at maximum approximation to Iota Draconis and 460 K ( 190 ° C ) at maximum distance. The average temperature is 600 K, which is about 330 ° C is estimated. Based on the mean temperature of the planet's atmosphere is likely to be mostly deep blue and cloudless, the periastron is a strongly light-absorbing black gray haze could form of vaporized alkali metals and darken the planet. The chemical composition, there is no data. However, it is assumed that dominate as the gas giants in our solar system, hydrogen, helium, methane, ammonia and water vapor.