Alien Planets Tell Tales With Colors

Two teams of Astronomers this week discovered the color of two planets by using infrared radiation. This break-through will allow experts to discover what the planet’s surface or atmosphere are made of. This is a major finding. According to Astronomy Magazine,  

Charbonneau’s group used the Spitzer Space Telescope’s Infrared Array Camera to home in on the light from TrES-1, a “hot Jupiter” zipping around a Sun-like star about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The astronomers tracked the intensity of two infrared “colors” as the planet passed behind its star, an event called secondary eclipse. The team subtracted the star’s radiation from the total seen when the planet was not eclipsed by the star. Measuring the gas giant’s infrared radiation allowed the team to calculate its temperature — a sizzling 1,450° F (1,060 kelvins). Charbonneau suspects his group has also found the spectral fingerprint of carbon monoxide in the planet’s atmosphere, but, he says, “We’re going to go back and get more data.”