DATE: Monday 19th November 2007<br><div class="gmail_quote">TIME: 12:00<br>ROOM: Pratt Conference Room, CfA<br>SPEAKER: Jonathan Langton (UC Santa Cruz)<br><br>"Atmospheric Dynamics on Unevenly Irradiated Jovian Planets"
<br><br>The increasingly rapid pace of the discovery of extrasolar planets has<br>brought to light a number of worlds with properties vastly different<br>from those in our own solar system. Dramatic examples of this variety
<br>are provided by a class of planets with highly eccentric (e>0.3)<br>orbits, with very close (a(1-e) < 0.05 AU) periastron passages. On<br>these planets, the subsolar irradiance varies by a factor of 3 to<br>1000, typically reaching ~10^6 W/m^2 at periastron.
<br><br>I will present the results of two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations<br>of the upper atmospheres of these planets. The flow geometry is<br>complex, turbulent, and primarily driven by the sudden influx of<br>energy at periastron. I will focus attention on 4 particularly
<br>interesting planets. HD 80606 b (e=0.9321) has the largest<br>eccentricity of any planet yet discovered. HAT-P-2 b (e=0.507)<br>presents a particularly promising observational target due to the<br>large infrared flux variation we predict, and due to the fact that it
<br>transits its parent star. HD 17156 b (e=0.67) also transits.<br>Finally, HD 37605 b (e=0.737), while not particularly suitable for<br>observation, occupies an especially interesting dynamical regime, with<br>persistent circumpolar vortices shielding their interiors from most of
<br>the periastron heating.<br>----<br><a href="http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/events/calendar/latest.html">http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/events/calendar/latest.html</a><br></div><br><br clear="all"><br>